Terrible, terrible things

Here's one of those posts where I show my age by talking about obscure things which nobody but me really misses.

Remember BEAST.COM? No, not the website, the program. Back in the days before Michael Jackson got scary, ".com" meant "executable command file." There was no web.

If you do remember it, great! You're an old fart, too. If not, allow me to refresh your memory (or introduce you to one of those things old farts think about when their minds wander).



Remember now? Oh. Okay, what about this?



You're the blue diamond thingie, the Hs and funny double-Hs are beasts that chase you, and the green bits are walls which you can push around to trap or squish the beasts, sort of like Pengo (sorry, another old-timer reference). The beasts lay eggs, there are exploding walls... an amazing amount of fun for a mere 7.5kb package. I haven't played it since the 80s, but I'm hard pressed to remember any game that took up as much time as it did, then or since. Not DOOM, not Quake, not Myst. Maybe the Kroz games...maybe.

I finally got around to searching for a copy on the net. Here's one place you can find it. Their description is better than mine.

I installed the DOSBox emulator for Linux just so I could play it again, and it works flawlessly. (There are versions of DOSBox for OS/X and Windows, too.) I just finished a two-hour marathon session. Woo hoo!

There exists an updated Linux version of BEAST called Monster Masher. It's okay, and prettier, but it's not really the same. Still good though, if you want to try out something with actual graphics.



Anyway, if you want a taste of what kept geeks entertained in the 80s, you could do worse than installing BEAST.COM on your computer.





Hmmm. I wonder if I should try to track down the BASIC source code for HURKLE while I'm at it...