I am not sure if this is the right forum, but the board says “all entertainment” shall go here and I guess computer games fall in that genre.
My husband loves a game made back in 1983 called M.U.LE., and I would like to get him a copy of it. As I understand, it was published again in 1999 for the PC. I was wondering if anyone had any idea where to find this little treasure.
Also, does anyone know of any similar games that are recommended?
If it was published for PC it’s news to me. And I loved mile for the Atari 800.
I know you can get a C64 emulator and play that version. A google search should turn that right up.
Great taste your hubby has there – M.U.L.E. is one of the all-time classics. I have not played it myself, but I hear great things about it.
Article on M.U.L.E. from IGN.com: http://pc.ign.com/articles/081/081722p1.html
As they note, the best place to go for old computer games is Home of the Underdogs. Here’s the link to the M.U.L.E. page, which includes a download link for the game itself and the manual. Hope softcopy works for your guy.
Oh, by the way – that’s the link to the C64 version, with an emulator. I couldn’t find anything on a PC release.
Anyone playing M.U.L.E. on anything other than an Atari 800 computer with four joystick ports is not playing the real M.U.L.E. 
(Why, yes, I do have it here, in emulation. Four players, no waiting…)
There was a remake released within the past year or two for the pc, called Space Horse, and can be found here http://www.shrapnelgames.com/gilligames/Space_HoRSE/1.htm. I have not played it so I cannot comment on it, but the screenshots seem to be close to how the original played. I read in a copy of Computer Gaming World that it had gotten a lackluster review due to it ‘not being a flashy or deep’ strategy game. I will attribute this to the fact that it did not have the 1000 options that a Starcraft may offer.
That said, it may not be the original MULE, but it will certainly be easier to install and setup for a ‘novice’ than figuring out the nuances of installing and setting up a C64 emulator and image (not that that is hard, but it is more challenging than autorunning installation software for a game).
There was another great C64 game I used to play, maybe someone here can help me out with the name. You play as a robot (you look like a floating ball) and you fly around different space ships. You meet other robots (evil robots I think), and your job is to either blow them up, or if you can’t do that (because they are tougher than you) you can try and take them over. When you try and take them over it takes you to another screen that’s almost like a board game, I can’t remember exactly what it looks like, but your goal is to fill up more slots with your colour pieces.
This may be an awful description, best I can remember, it has been years since I played that game. It and M.U.L.E were my favorite C64 games.
Aw, heck. I thought you were talking about LASH, the classic Infocom game.
I do recall M.U.L.E., but no graphical game could compare to the pure joy of solving a good Infocom title. And those games are still playable, by and large, because Infocom released them all as Z-machine bytecode, which was a good idea then (when Ataris, x86-PCs, and Commodores still battled for the same niches) and is a better idea now (when different OSes battle for the same x86-PCs, and hardware in general has changed substantially). Plus, bytecode is cool in and of itself.
“You are in a geeky maze of gamers, all different.”
I was just saying the other day to someone how M.U.L.E. taught me the word “collusion” and what it meant.
I loved the theme music on the C64 version.
Nitpick: LASH was never a title released by Infocom. It runs on the Infocom Z-Machine engine, but was developed by a third-party not affiliated with Infocom AFAIK.
That’s it! I loved that game. Thanks Jeff.
Thanks guys, it is nice to know my husband is not alone in his love for this old classic. You know, the advanced nature of computers and games cannot compete with a simple, catchy game that everyone enjoys. Too bad these game manufacturers cannot remember that.
I found some evidence of a PC game.
It has the notion of a PC game. Also, I downloaded the emulator from the dog site, but how do you use a keyboard with it??? I want to have the game ready to play for my husband.
Someone mentioned there might be a Nintendo 8-bit emulator with the game since it was made of the first Nintendo machine. Does anyone know about this?