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Comment by jlv2 | Hacker News Reader

Our Atari 800 is still hooked up and operational. My kids (now all in their 20s) came home with college friends and showed them some of their favorite games on it (like JumpMan! and M.U.L.E.).

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Well done. M.U.L.E. is absolutely one of the finest games of the 8-bit era, and the Atari version is superior to the C64 version. If I could spare the cash, I'd buy an old Atari and four joysticks just to have a M.U.L.E. machine.

(Luckily, MAME runs Atari M.U.L.E. beautifully under Linux.)

OMG.. M.U.L.E. still might be my favorite video game.

M.U.L.E. might be the most well-conceived and well-executed game for replay-ability and enduring enjoyment given the hardware limitations of the 8-bit era. It had/has the advantage of allowing up to 4 human players to participate, which keeps it fresh even today in the same way board games from 40 years ago can remain fresh. Yes, the AI players are easily defeated, but human opponents made M.U.L.E. a true delight.

Got to dig out my paddles for four player M.U.L.E.

Wait, you can play M.U.L.E. with paddles? I've never seen that. It's usually four joysticks.

If you had the XE machines you had to use paddles. The Atari 400/800 had 4 joysticks which was more fun.

M.U.L.E. Is still one of the best games ever made. They had another game called Seven Cities of Gold. It was pretty fun too. I doubt you could make that game today but it was fun to play with friends on the reservation.

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