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Comment by crusso | Hacker News Reader

Andrew Welch had an intense Bolo addiction for a while. It was in the latter part of my own Bolo addiction, but we played quite a few games together.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo_(1987_video_game)

Ah, Bolo.

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I played sooo much of Bolo. Still one of my top-favorite games ever. I was so into it, I printed out guides and read them when I couldn't actively play the game. I started to memorize the different "pill-taking" layouts so I could easily take a base so quickly and flawlessly. Well, needless to say my skills weren't too useful because I wasn't able to arrange AppleTalk games of Bolo very often... but when we played, I usually destroyed!!! hahaha :) Ahh, such a great game. :)

Bolo was a cult phenomenon back in its heyday in the early-to-mid 1990s. It was a game with a great deal of tactical and strategic depth that it allowed a huge range of player ability. It definitely wasn't the kind of game where some newbie could just start playing and get a lucky win or be a master in days or weeks. It felt more like a sport where you needed to practice the basics (like you mentioned on taking PBs) while you also learned a lot about strategy.

My favorite times were the Bolofests where traveling boloers would come into town and we'd all get together to play on a LAN.

I bought a Mac Plus recently, and one of the new things I installed on it's MASSIVE 20 megabytes hard drive was Bolo. And then I proceeded to waste a good hour playing it all sadly by myself without the Localtalk network that used to be full of games, back in the day. sniffle

Soooo there's actually one really cool thing you can do: run additional copies of Bolo with "brains" like aIndy, Brainwave or so on which act as actual players (sometimes a lot better than actual players haha) ... This was another really fascinating feature of Bolo that many other multiplayer games never had. So you can have simulated multiplayer! Worth a try!

I know... but it's not the same as hearing the screams of despair as your arch-tank-enemy gets destroyed by your cleverly laid mine from across the office floor! :-)

Oh yeah, very true indeed! First time I played was at a course at a university. Was amazing energy having ~8-person Bolo matches. Unforgettable experience tbh :)

"had" ;) /berserkir

I know. If it were still a thing, I'd probably play it today. /C++

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