Sunday, May 29, 2011

I Cheated in Trade Wars

I've been a big-time cheater all my life, at least in the wonderful world of games. I've never cheated on my taxes or on my partner, and the closest I've come to cheating my employer has been taking the odd pen home. Well, I'm not so sure my employers would actually have been opposed to taking a disposable pen home on occasion. They weren't skinflints, although the quality of the coffee in the office kitchen left a lot to be desired. I don't know why working people settle for rotgut when it comes to coffee. Good beans don't cost that much more than bad. I can get a pound of Sumatran for something like $7. Does that break the bank? I don't think so.

But I digress. I want to describe a specific episode of my cheating. It was brought to mind when I was winning an online chess game. I defeated my opponent in fourteen moves--checkmate, boom-yow! He never saw it coming. The words that came to my mind were, "Good night, sweet prince!" Those were the exact words used when finishing me off in Trade Wars about twenty years ago.

I don't know how many people remember Trade Wars. It was a text-based role-playing game of the BBS era set in a space-faring intergalactic civilization where one played as a merchant and was allotted a number of turns. The player visited planets buying ore or other goods and selling at a profit. Other traders would attack if encountered, because the goods of the vanquished were forfeited to the victor. One player in particular was a rampaging terror, wasting other traders, including me. He had a vast empire and was too powerful to eliminate, even if one were to find his hideaway.

My hacker nature got the better of me when I stumbled upon a system error that dropped me directly into DOS. I knew enough commands to load the Trade Wars Editor and give myself an enormous number of credits. Armed thus, I raised a vast army of ships so as to dominate the game. I tracked down the main player who had been lording it over every one else, killed him and took all his credits and other possessions. He would have to start over! I chuckled about that and called it quits for the day.

The next day when I logged on, I noticed that I was no longer able to load the Trade Wars Editor. When I logged into the game, I discovered I had been killed by the player I had killed the day before. He sent me a message that said, "GOOD NIGHT SWEET PRINCE!!!!!" It turns out that the System Operator had at least suspected my intrusion and had awarded my enemy even more credits than I had given myself. So, he was now invulnerable. Curse those tattle-tale system logs! I had to quit that Trade Wars Universe.

The moral of the story? There is no moral. I just like that line, "Good night, sweet prince!" It comes from Shakespeare and was spoken during a murder. Perhaps Macbeth?
by igor 04:20 4 replies by igor 09:32 0 comments

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