August 1998: Redmond, Washington. I cautiously approach an arcade cabinet, its phosphorous glow beckoning me in the darkness of the hallway like a siren’s song. I run my fingers gingerly over the cabinet and feel the spherical mounds of two trackballs, one red, one blue.
“It has no joystick.” I was struck. Sigmund Freud would have said that this arcade machine was a woman among a sea of joystick-ed peers. I say it is beautiful. I playfully spin the trackball and a naked Medusa comes on the screen, her snakes playfully hiding the more naughty bits. “Medusa, you tease.” I say.
It’s been over two months since I last saw my girlfriend, 3000 miles away. I was lonely. It’s only cheating if it’s the same species, or so I tell myself.
I fish through my pockets for a quarter while Medusa shows me how she’s trouncing one of the other AIs. Sweat pours down my brow as I find my pockets empty. Is my tryst with this digital mythical creature doomed from the start? I begin to despair, when I notice on the bottom of the screen the world’s two most beautiful words: Free Play.
I press the Player 1 button and I wait in anticipation. Soon, it will be just the two of us… and a colony of slimes? Noooo!
I play and defeat the colony of slimes only to be assaulted by a fat hillbilly mutant. It seems that my Medusa is the third opponent in the game. I defeat Cletus with hardly any effort. Nobody will stay between and my five minute imaginary fling.
At last, She arrives. We start playing. She quickly dominates the field. “So that’s how you like it? I can do that baby” I tell her. I turn the tables on her, I make a comeback but she’s relentless. More sweat pours down my face, my chest, my hands, on the controls. Each move changes the game almost completely, each move a note in our symphony. It is anybody’s game. Who’s going to go first? Her or me? Who’s going to come out on top?
Eventually we are done. Both of us are spent. I wish I smoked, because I want to light a cigarette. I give her one last look and promise I’ll come again tomorrow. Will I? You bet.
Fast Forward to today…
I’ve been infatuated with the game Ataxx for a very long time, so I decided to make my own version of it with quite a few twists. I’ll talk about that at a later date when I have something impressive to show you. Let’s talk about the rules for Ataxx for now.
The game is similar to Othello or Reversi where two players play on a board each with different color pieces. Just like Othello, the point is to create more pieces and convert as many of your opponent’s pieces as possible.
Tokens can move in one of two ways. They can slide or jump.
To slide, you select one of your pieces, and you then select any vacant square on the board that is adjacent to the piece. This will cause your piece to divide in two, that is, you have now 2 pieces, one in the original location, and one in the new location.
To jump, select one of your pieces, and then select a vacant square that lies one space beyond where you can slide. For example, if you have a piece at (3, 3), it can slide to (4, 3), but it can jump to (5, 3). Sadly, when you jump, you are moving that piece, it does not divide.
Whenever you place a piece on the board, be it by sliding or jumping, any of your opponent’s pieces that are adjacent to the one you just placed become yours.
Simple, right?
Anyway, I’m developing and testing the core functionality of the game; the rules and AI, if you will. So that I will not get distracted by graphics, sound, resource management, etc, I decided to create a cheesy, half-assed text-mode test program.
The interface of the test program is crappy. You have to play with the CAPS-Lock on. Sorry 
. It was not meant to be played by anyone. But since my fans are requesting, nay, demanding new content, who am I to refuse.
It runs under Windows. Have fun, and any feedback is welcome. You can get the file
right here, it’s only 47kb.