I got to know Core War through Polish computer magazines in the early to mid 90s. These magazines provided tutorials and tournaments for Core War programs. I found them interesting at the time but I didn't have a runtime environment to write my own programs so I was only studying the code.

While Core War had some depth, in the end it seemed the most successful programs used the same pattern. First it worked as a scanner to find the enemy, then it worked as a vampire to trap the enemy process in a small loop that forces the enemy process to split repeatedly (to slow the processes that are still roaming free), then once all processes are trapped, kill them.

I wonder if there were any changes in the rulebook since the 90s that would add more variety to the game.