
Dan Bunten and M.U.L.E. (2013) - pmoriarty
https://www.filfre.net/2013/02/dan-bunten-and-m-u-l-e/
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robodale
Absolutely loved it on the Commodore64, and still love playing the
ROM+emulator version. It's truly a masterpiece of easy to learn, yet
challenging to master, and of course just plain fun.

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ryl00
> Despite all the love lavished on M.U.L.E. by Ozark Softscape and EA and
> despite deservedly stellar reviews, it was a commercial disappointment.
> M.U.L.E. sold only about 30,000 copies over its lifetime

Wow, that's sad to hear. But I still have one of those 30,000 here in my study
(if the C64 counts in those numbers!)

~~~
phjesusthatguy3
Yeah, nah, my cousins were known C64 pirates and I had hundreds of disks
filled with games for my C64. I too loved MULE, but I didn't pay for it. It
makes me sad, now.

EDIT: my standard loading screen was ISEPIC[0]

[0][https://rr.pokefinder.org/rrwiki/images/7/71/ISEPIC.gif](https://rr.pokefinder.org/rrwiki/images/7/71/ISEPIC.gif)

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protomyth
Four player M.U.L.E. was amazing. It was such a fun game that had simple rules
but pretty varied strategies.

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dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5211036](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5211036)

2014:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7929284](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7929284)

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byron_fast
The first game I played for 12 hours straight without noticing what happened.
The only real flaw was the crystite strategy that had a "runaway win" nature.

Played this for years before I realized that you get points for making your
property contiguous.

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ryanmercer
I still regularly play M.U.L.E. on my 800xl daily driver.

There still exist a ton of us that love our vintage machines and games, us
Atari guys hang out on the [https://atariage.com/](https://atariage.com/)
forums and in fact my local Atari group has our monthly meeting this Saturday
and there are plenty of larger meetups like the ones that the Vintage Computer
Federation puts on
[http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/](http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/)

Floppy Days podcast has been doing a good job documenting old machines and
software by talking to the people involved
[http://floppydays.libsyn.com/](http://floppydays.libsyn.com/) as well as
uploading anything they get to the Internet Archive.

For Atari there's also ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast by some of the same
people involved with Floppy Days
[https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/](https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/)

There's also the Facebook page "Vintage Computer Shows" that tries to list all
upcoming shows/conventions that is run by one of the ANTIC guys (that also
runs the local group here in Indy).

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jdkee
M.U.L.E. on the Atari 800 was fantastic.

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vanderZwan
So what is the consensus on _Planet M.U.L.E._ for those who actually remember
the original game? It was my first introduction to M.U.L.E. as a game, and I
thought it was a very neat little implementation back when I tried it

[http://www.planetmule.com/](http://www.planetmule.com/)

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vermontdevil
Loved M.U.L.E. Friend and I used to play for hours on the Commodore64. Now we
still play using the emulator.

~~~
audiometry
Can emulator handle four physical joysticks? I’d like to assemble a setup to
play w four people.

~~~
matthewn
A Commodore 64 only had 2 joystick ports, so the C64 version of M.U.L.E. uses
the keyboard for players 3 and 4 on screens where all players are active, but
accepts input from any joystick on screens where only one player is active --
allowing players to pass the sticks around to take their "turns".

The Atari version of the game supports four joysticks as did the underlying
hardware. This is the version you want to play in emulation if you have 4
players. Great fun!

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ryandrake
> But as any good game designer, whether she works in cardboard or silicon,
> will tell you, even the most genius of designs must be relentlessly tested,
> endlessly tweaked. Ozark Softscape and EA devoted literally months to this
> task, gradually refining the design.

It was nice in the '80s to buy a game and receive an actual finished game out
of the box. Contrast that today where the game is barely working on release
day, and underwent insufficient play testing and tuning. We're so reliant on
endless patches now, and gamers inexplicably accept the idea of buying
unfinished "early access" games. Does any major studio actually devote a
length of time measurable in months to play testing anymore?

~~~
crankylinuxuser
We're going to see a much larger problem, of actually archiving this
autoupdated software.

10 years later, I could reinstall NeverWinter Nights. 20 years later, and I
could still install Unreal Tournament. 25, Total Annihilation. 30 years ago;
Duke nukem.

But that online game that came out 4 years ago and was abandoned; gone to
time. Even if I have the client, the server world is gone. Nada. Any trace of
my playing, my friends, our exploits; gone from time. But there's a CNet
article about it. That's as close as anyone will ever get.

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davidw
I spent hours playing that on my C64. I can still hear that music in my
head...

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exlurker
The music is very catchy, indeed:
[http://deepsid.chordian.net/?file=/GAMES/M-R/M_U_L_E.sid](http://deepsid.chordian.net/?file=/GAMES/M-R/M_U_L_E.sid)

~~~
teddyh
MP3s available here:

[https://ftp.acc.umu.se/mirror/media/Oakvalley/soasc/hvsc/051...](https://ftp.acc.umu.se/mirror/media/Oakvalley/soasc/hvsc/051/MP3/GAMES/M-R/)

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radarsat1
I always loved the look & idea of M.U.L.E., but I never understood how to play
it.

