Bolo

Every now and then I run across something that has me remember something from my past and today it was a computer game called Bolo by Stuart Cheshire. Don't be mistaken by the 1982 game that was for the Apple II as I am talking about the 1987 game.

I mean what wasn't there to like about this very basic game, you were a tank on an island for a winner or team take all. In the game you could capture pillboxes (automatic gun turrets), refueling bases, build walls and boats, join alliances, farm trees, and lay mines. You could find other built maps or even create your own to add to the challenge if you wanted to play alone or even with others.

"Bolo is the Hindi word for communication. Bolo is about computers communicating on the network, and more importantly about humans communicating with each other, as they argue, negotiate, form alliances, agree strategies, etc."

To top if off if you were lucky enough you could play against others on a local network at your school which is what some of my friends and I did. It helped that this was back when Mac computers were starting to show up in school and my dad was the Middle School Principal so he would let a couple of us go into the computer labs after school. Most of the time there was only 2-4 of us so we would boot up as many computers as we could and set most of them to be on autopilot with various "Brains" we had downloaded to the disks we had.

In my stumbling around to find out more about this old game I used to enjoy I found where you can play an old version online in the Internet Archive.