Frank Herbert, of course, is the person who created and wrote the first Dune books. You remember Dune, don’t you? Paul Atreides, Muad’Dib, Bene Gesserit, Baron Harkonen, etc? Notably, in the backstory to his sci-fi epic masterpiece, there was a time called the Butlerian Jihad, where all computers and robots were destroyed and it was declared taboo to create a machine to do the thinking of a human being. These days, doesn’t seem like such a bad idea!
Well he was a bit of a tech enthusiast at the time, and he wrote a book about computers, possibly to try to not get too full of themselves, entitled “Without Me You’re Nothing: The Essential Guide to Home Computers.” The computers in question are Apple IIs and Atari 8-bits, so it may seem kind of quaint today. Also, the link is on the Internet Archive, and it’s one of those funky books that you have to “check out,” for about an hour, because every viewed copy is backed up by a physical edition they have in holding. You know, because publishers suck!
Still, for periods of an hour at a time, it is a portal into a simpler time, where computers typically had 64 kilobytes of memory or less. Will they inspire you to destroy all thinking machines and train a cadre of people to do complex math in their heads? I’m going to guess no, even though Apple products are one of the subjects of the book. In order to be inspired really loathe computers, I think you have to have at least a 300-baud modem.
One of the essences of comedy and humor is a shared context between participants. When a joke is made both the teller and the hearer must know what’s being spoken of, and how the elements fit together in relation to each other, if the funny ha-ha is to occur.
Which is why I find the creation of The MAD Computer Program interesting. Published on issue 258 in BASIC for four of the microcomputer platforms of the time, Atari 8-bit, Apple II, Commodore 64 and IBM PC, it was obviously MAD’s bid to maintain technically relevant to that brief moment in computing history. Setting aside whether it’s actually funny or not (it’s not), it means that MAD’s editors must have decided that home computers were common enough that they could waste some of their precious print pages on catering to their owners. Anyone without one of those computers would find them to be four pages of wasted content.
The four programs have a lead-in that reads in a set of data (using READ commands to get vector coordinates from DATA statements, of course). The lead-in part is different for each platform, but the lines with the DATA statements are the same, and so are only printed once in the magazine. That’s also the least interesting part of the ordeal of entering type-in programs: tables of raw data, numbers without context, sequences of values that will put your monkey brain to sleep, yet will surely cause your code to fail catastrophically if entered incorrectly. There’s 140 lines of them to enter here, plus some more if you’re using a C64. As my eyes brush over them, childhood trauma from entering type-ins from computer magazines cause them to water involuntarily. I miss the age of magazine-supplied type-in programs, but not that part of it.
What do you get when you spend a grueling half-hour typing in two pages of numbers written by a group who describes themselves as a gang of idiots? Something genuine useful like Compute’s Speedscript word processor? A unique and interesting two-player game like Basketball Sam & Ed or Laser Chess? The author of the text of the piece is coy about what the result will be, but encourages readers to send a printout to the MAD offices. I wonder how many did? Probably not too many; a thread on the AtariAge forums implies that there’s an error in the listing that causes the program to crash about two-thirds the way into its run. One participant remembers that MAD published a correction a few issues later, but if they actually did I can’t say.
If someone does get it to work, what then? If you’re familiar with MAD you might can already guess what the result, a picture drawn in hi-res on your screen, will be, but to save you the effort of setting up an emulator and entering over a thousand numbers one at a time, here’s a Youtube video of the program in action:
The preview gives it away. WHAT, ME WORRY? It’s a pretty good representation!
The video links to the blog post on Meatfigher.net that I learned about the program from. Meatfighter’s a pretty cool little blog and it’s worth rummaging through their archives! atariprojects.org offers an emulator disk image with the program already entered for you. dougx.net offers a version of the program written in Javascript that renders its output in your browser window. Without the (relatively) low resolution of the ancient computers that ran the original programs I feel the result loses something, but at least you don’t have to type it in yourself.
Dani Bunten’s classic economic simulation M.U.L.E. is one of the all-time greats, still fairly obscure even among people who know and talk about video and computer games, but hugely influential. Wikipedia tells us that Shigeru Miyamoto considers it an influence on the Pikmin games (although other than in theme I really don’t see it).
There are three current ways to play M.U.L.E. One is Planet M.U.L.E., an official port sponsored by Ozark Softscape, which is several years old, and I was certain I had posted here about before. It’s a proper update with new graphics and a lot of character. A thing about M.U.L.E. is that the original versions were intricately designed in a lot of ways, not just in game rules but the little details. The way the phase ending noise speeds up, the exact difficulty of catching a Wampus, the speeds with which players walk through terrain, the many details of auctions, even the time it takes to outfit a mule and leave/enter town, it’s all finely calculated. You can tell that Dani cared deeply about the game, and it’s a polished as any game I’ve ever seen, and that’s the old 8-bit computer versions. Planet M.U.L.E. isn’t as polished, but it’s still very nice, and you can tell its makers thought hard about it. It offers both local and online play.
Sadly, Planet M.U.L.E. seems to be on life support. While games can still be played, and the automated best player posts still go up on its blog, it’s not gotten an update in years, and it’s even possible they’ve lost the source code.
One legacy of Planet M.U.L.E. is a wonderful Youtube video they made that explains the game and how to play. It’s a great introduction:
M.U.L.E. Returns was a mobile port. It has a website, that’s still around, but apparently none of those versions are available. It’s got a page for a Steam version, but it’s not available despite the original game being released in 2013. The site claims it may come back some day, but it cannot be purchased currently.
Then there’s the new roboanimal on the block, M.U.L.E. Online, which is on itch.io for a very reasonable $5. It has the blessing of Ozark Softscape, and is a near match for the Atari 800 version. You won’t get any improved graphics or sound here, but you will get a game that copies the original very closely, which is perfectly fine in my opinion. It offers local single and multiplayer, as well as internet-based online play. They also promote a board game version of M.U.L.E, which I’ve long wanted to try!
Or there’s emulation. Back in college I played M.U.L.E. with roommates via an Atari 800 emulator burnt to a Dreamcast disk, a great way to play if you have the system, controllers and means to construct the disk because the Dreamcast has four controller ports. (M.U.L.E. is by far at its best when you have four people playing.) The Commdore 64 and IBM PC versions were also made by Dani and the others at Ozark Softscape. The C64 port is close to the Atari 8-bit version. I don’t know about the DOS PC version. I can say that the NES version made by Mindscape is a terrible version, while sadly possibly the most-played because of the great popularity of the NES. If you tried that version and wondered what the fuss is about, you should seek out the Atari 8-bit version and play it before writing off the game entirely.
World Of Mule is a fansite dedicated to M.U.L.E. in all its forms. For its 40th anniversary, they’ve published a long retrospective on the game, its history and the new versions. (That’s where the above image comes from.) It’s a fitting tribute to one of the most influential computer games ever made.
Long ago, on primordial wiki-like site everything2.com, I personally wrote a long examination and play guide to M.U.L.E. While my writing style back then was pretty crazy, I think the information holds up. If you have an interest, you may want to take a look.
