Game:

The Ball (2010)

Duration: 12:21

2,580 views

23

Journey into the past, to a time known as the '90s and place legend speaks of as Middle School, where until it was modernized when Mr. Podoboo was half-way through the 8th grade, the computer lab was populated by mythical beasts known as IBM PS/2s, whose diminutive 286 brains could little comprehend your "Riven" or your "Age of Empire". Young Mr. Podoboo, errant programmer, devised for these brutes games of a simple nature that even they could play. Who then could know that in the distant future, after a millennium had passed, one of those very games would be uncovered, edited only slightly, and released unto the world to be enjoyed again.

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The game's description is true, I wrote it back in '97 to play on my middle school's hilariously outdated computers. I thought about it while doing the "Pop Corn" prologue for my "Alone in the Dark" LP and decided to dig it up.

This version is slightly modified from the original. The name on the title card was changed and the 2012 date added. The timing loop was rewritten to be independent of the CPU speed (the original game ran too fast to be playable on a modern computer).

The block layout is random. Purple blocks take one hit, red blocks take two, and cyan blocks take three. You get one point for each hit. Every 100 points, you get an extra ball. There's a nine ball maximum. There is no end, you keep playing until you run out of balls. The graphics are text-based. The sound is PC speaker.

You can download the game at http://www.TriGeoFire.com/GamesCity/CrapStreet/MrP/ . The game can be run from a command window on Vista or Windows 7, but the colors are weird and it runs jerky. It looks and plays as intended in DOSBox. And on a real DOS machine, obviously.

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