It's quite fashionable to be condescending towards hippies and the 60's counterculture these days, but I find them incredibly inspiring.
I wonder how different today's gaming world would be were more game designers and studios more concerned with expressing their idealism through their games rather than squeezing out a few more FPS, making prettier graphics, or making games according to tired formulas.
Maybe it's me projecting but I've always been more of a fan of Jeff Minter for what I perceieve of him as being a really cool down to earth dude rather than his games (despite me liking many of them).
Someone just needs to get him to keep writing - last post was 6-7 years ago.
The music is burned into my mind.
I haven't done a search, but I assume there are some modern homages to MULE?
Edit: Only 30,000 copies were ever sold? Just goes to show how uncommon it was to own a computer back then. I think I still have my disk and cardboard flip-case somewhere... I should dig that up.
Here's some videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LiqbEvEnrg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1W52wQUkKc
Unfortunately, the website for that game seems to be gone.
I highly recommend it!
The release date has been pushed back repeatedly and should be any day now. Apparently making software is hard.
I can't wait. When playing M.U.L.E. on the C64, I've never was able to get four people together. Now I've got a second chance.
Those wild college years.
One of these days I'm going to find the time to sit down and play Colossal Cave Adventure.
And then after that maybe I'll find somebody willing to play Spacewar! with me.
The day I played it, the docent giving the demonstration was Steve Russell.
It's touched on briefly in the article, but another thing I remember from this time in gaming is a short-lived but fascinating push to make the makers of these games public figures. It wasn't a ton of games, but I think it was EA (ECA back then) that would include pictures of the game design team and a brief blurb inside each of their games.