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Dan Bunten and M.U.L.E.

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Re: Dan Bunten and M.U.L.E.

#11

Post by discostrings »

Kronopath wrote: post #10
bhauer wrote: post #2

MULE is one of my favorite video games of all time. It has been years since I last played (via emulation) but it's one of those games like Warcraft II and Starcraft where I find it's all to easy to say, "How about one more round?" The music is burned into my mind. I haven't done a search, but I assume there are some modern homages to MULE? Edit: Only 30,000 copies were ever sold? Just goes to show how uncommon it was…

There was the free Planet M.U.L.E., from 2009, which had online features and updated graphics. Here's some videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LiqbEvEnrg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1W52wQUkKc Unfortunately, the website for that game seems to be gone.

Planet M.U.L.E. is still around--at least as of a week or two ago! I haven't played in a while, but I check the site everyone once in a while to see if there's any news and whether people are still playing. Here's a cached version of the site from January 29th: http://web.archive.org/web/20130129005307/http://www.planetm... . I'm guessing they're just having minor issues.

I highly recommend it!

Re: Dan Bunten and M.U.L.E.

#12

Post by gillianseed »

cstuder wrote: post #8
bhauer wrote: post #2

MULE is one of my favorite video games of all time. It has been years since I last played (via emulation) but it's one of those games like Warcraft II and Starcraft where I find it's all to easy to say, "How about one more round?" The music is burned into my mind. I haven't done a search, but I assume there are some modern homages to MULE? Edit: Only 30,000 copies were ever sold? Just goes to show how uncommon it was…

M.U.L.E. Returns will be a modern, faithful remake, officially licensed: http://mulereturns.com The release date has been pushed back repeatedly and should be any day now. Apparently making software is hard. I can't wait. When playing M.U.L.E. on the C64, I've never was able to get four people together. Now I've got a second chance.

Interesting, although I have to say that judging by graphics alone, the Planet M.U.L.E version referenced in this thread looks alot better (imo).

Re: Dan Bunten and M.U.L.E.

#13

Post by gillianseed »

gnosis wrote: post #4

"Dan Bunten was an idealist from an early age. At university he protested the Vietnam War, and also started a bicycle shop, not to make money but to help save the world. According to his friend Jim Simmons, Bunten’s logic was simple: “If more people rode bikes, the world would be a better place.” When he watched Westerns, Bunten was an “Indian sympathizer”: “It just seems like such a neat, romantic culture, in tune w…

Heh, I quite agree.

Maybe it's me projecting but I've always been more of a fan of Jeff Minter for what I perceieve of him as being a really cool down to earth dude rather than his games (despite me liking many of them).

Re: Dan Bunten and M.U.L.E.

#14

Post by vidarh »

gillianseed wrote: post #13
gnosis wrote: post #4

"Dan Bunten was an idealist from an early age. At university he protested the Vietnam War, and also started a bicycle shop, not to make money but to help save the world. According to his friend Jim Simmons, Bunten’s logic was simple: “If more people rode bikes, the world would be a better place.” When he watched Westerns, Bunten was an “Indian sympathizer”: “It just seems like such a neat, romantic culture, in tune w…

Heh, I quite agree. Maybe it's me projecting but I've always been more of a fan of Jeff Minter for what I perceieve of him as being a really cool down to earth dude rather than his games (despite me liking many of them).

Jeff Minters autobiography series is a fun read: http://minotaurproject.co.uk/lshistory1.php

Someone just needs to get him to keep writing - last post was 6-7 years ago.

Re: Dan Bunten and M.U.L.E.

#15

Post by jbattle »

I loved this game as a kid - I remember getting my whole family to play a few times, what a blast!

It's touched on briefly in the article, but another thing I remember from this time in gaming is a short-lived but fascinating push to make the makers of these games public figures. It wasn't a ton of games, but I think it was EA (ECA back then) that would include pictures of the game design team and a brief blurb inside each of their games.

Re: Dan Bunten and M.U.L.E.

#16

Post by ts4z »

unimpressive wrote: post #9

Old video games are particularly interesting as artifacts because they implicitly highlight the capabilities of hardware and the sort of peripherals that could be expected during that period. One of these days I'm going to find the time to sit down and play Colossal Cave Adventure. And then after that maybe I'll find somebody willing to play Spacewar! with me.

If you go to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, they have a PDP-1 running Space War.

The day I played it, the docent giving the demonstration was Steve Russell.

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