[typing]
Today, we've got yet another remnant of my geeky childhood,
and that is Balloon Challenge,
a DOS PC game released by Soleau Software in 1993.
Chances are if you participated in the PC shareware scene in the early-'90s,
you came across a game by Soleau at some point.
I know our family got several of them from shareware vendors at conventions,
held in convention centers,
which is a great place to hold conventions, by the way.
It's like they're made for just such a thing.
Eventually, I ended up with several Soleau games like Alpha Man,
Ant Run,
Bolo Ball,
and, of course, Balloon Freakin' Challenge.
Many of these were actually made by William Soleau,
who founded the company along with a couple of his friends.
They were all ballet dancers for the same dance company,
met while on tour,
and decided to start writing computer software together.
I must admit, at first I thought the transition from ballet dancer to game designer
was a bit of an odd one,
but then I thought about the insane level of dedication
and creativity the dancers I've known have,
and actually it makes a lot of sense to apply that same level of discipline to computer games.
And you see an example of this by the quality and quantity of Soleau Software games.
They had like 60 friggin' games, and they're pretty much all awesome.
While Balloon Challenge was the first game of theirs I'd played,
it was preceded by the 1992 game Bolo Ball.
This was a logic-based puzzle game
where the goal was to get each of your balls to drop
and drop as far as possible,
so you score more than your opponent.
The follow-up game, Balloon Challenge, replaces balls with latex
and flips the gameplay on its head.
In Balloon Challenge, you challenge balloons
to balloon themselves to a challenging state or something.
You start the game by pressing any key
to have the computer randomly decide who goes first.
Admittedly, not a very tough task for the computer, since there's only two choices:
you, the red balloon,
or the computer, the yellow balloon.
There are plusses and minuses to going first or second
because the game is turn-based, much of the strategy
requires you to anticipate your opponent's possible moves.
There are 25 hot air balloons along the bottom of the screen.
Uh, so scratch that innuendo-ridden comment earlier about latex.
I guess these are actually fabric balloons.
The entire goal of the game is to get your balloons as high as possible
without making use of any recreational drugs.
Since each balloon can only be moved once,
the timing of each balloon launch is critical.
Press spacebar to launch a balloon and it's now out of your control.
Once your balloon stops moving, you'll be given a score for that balloon,
which is added to your total for that game.
The higher the balloon goes, the higher your score is.
And even though you can't really see it,
the screen is actually made up of tiles
divided into 15 rows and 25 columns,
so it's easy to grasp the logic of what's happening when each balloon is launched.
Each tile does something different to your balloon.
Airplanes will destroy your balloon on contact
and move forward between turns,
dark clouds will stop your balloon's movement,
arrows will move your balloons left or right on contact
and change directions after being touched,
hurricanes–which look curiously like tornadoes
but the instructions call them hurricanes, whatever–
will teleport your balloon to some random location,
and these number 10s will give you ten bonus points when you pass through them.
There are some other strategies to employ that aren't mentioned specifically,
like the ability to launch a balloon into an arrow next to another balloon,
and it will continue past it instead of stopping.
Very handy for getting past certain areas.
You can also eliminate one of your opponent's balloons
by launching one of yours into a spot directly above one of theirs,
which gives you a low score, but prevents them from getting any score.
Once all of the balloons have been launched,
whoever has the highest score wins a screen
telling them they've won, and that's it!
It's an incredibly simple game but, man, is it addicting!
The formula is absolutely timeless,
and it doesn't matter how simplistic the graphics are,
the gameplay itself is completely solid.
While there is some random chance involved with the tornadoes and such,
there is a definite strategy that's just awesome once you get the hang of it.
While the computer is a competent enough player,
it gets even better when you play human vs. human multiplayer mode.
Of course, you only have access to this mode if you buy the full game.
I never had the full game growing up,
mainly because the $12 it costs
seemed like a lot to pay for the addition of a multiplayer mode and that's about it.
But now I'm stupid and nostalgic,
so I went ahead and grabbed the full game from Soleau.com.
Yes, you can actually still buy Balloon Challenge
and a ton of old Soleau games, and some new ones, too.
And would be believe the prices are the same as they were 18 years ago?
Ah, at least I finally got my multiplayer mode, and while it's awesome,
the price seems even sillier now than it did back then.
Not to say that it isn't worth it, because it was to me,
but that's mostly due to the fact that I'm a really bizarre individual
who doesn't mind paying for ancient DOS games I used to love.
And still rather enjoy, even though I'm constantly getting older.
It's kind of sad, but you know what? Good games are good!
I'd still whole-heartedly recommend the shareware version of Balloon Challenge
to pretty much anyone because it's simple and addicting.
In fact, I'd love to see this remade for the Android or iOS platform
because this kind of quick and addicting gameplay is ideal for mobile gaming.
And as long as it ends up costing less than $12.
But until then, I'll continue playing it on my 486,
content with another $12 well spent.
[PC speaker beeping]