Stracon 2

Stracon 2 is an other simple game from my teenage years. This time the aim was to make a game that could be played by as many players as possible for the MSX 2 home-computer system. For this I choose to link-up 2 computers so that up to 8 players could participate in a coordinated battle (private computer networks did not exist yet back in those days).

This link-up was established using the serial I/O MIDI-interfaces which were present in the so-called 'Music-Module' hardware cartridges. These cartridges were very popular in those days and were almost considered 'standard equipment' for any MSX owner. The benefit of this design was that no additional hardware had to be used and/or build by a prospect user (alternative methods would require manually constructed cables between joy-stick or printer ports).

The game itself was again written using the built-in BASIC interpreter of the MSX 2 system and the use of a 'pre-compiler' tool to help speed up its execution. The players were now no longer restricted to a single screen sized arena but had total freedom of movement in large arenas.

Each player views its attack vehicle through one of the 4 independent view-ports on the screen and all share a radar screen at the center which displays the rough position of all active players. The game featured numerous arenas and even allowed users to create new ones themselves using various tools which were part of the whole game package.