Classic game "Bolo" died on Mac more than two decades ago. It's back for modern Macs for free on Steam now, and on the App Store for iPhone later. You need to try it.
Ages and ages ago, when I was still in the Navy and transferring from one duty station to another, my brother was visiting. It was freezing and snowing, and we were basically stuck in the hotel room, with a U-Haul outside with everything I owned in it.
In a hotel in Saratoga Springs, we hooked up a very rudimentary network with Farallon PhoneNet connectors between my Classic II and a Mac Portable obtained from, I think, Shreve Systems, and played network games all afternoon.
The long-departed RoboSport was high on that list, so were Pararena, NetTrek, and MazeWars+. The highlight of the afternoon was Bolo.
Bolo has a storied history. I didn't know this at the time, but developer and later Apple employee Stuart Cheshire originally coded it for the BBC Micro.
It made it to the Mac in 1987. Bolo was on my "must play" list when I had people over until it stopped working, I want to say in the mid-OS 9 days.
As far as the gameplay goes, it's a move-and-shoot top-down tank game. The objective is to capture bases and destroy your opposition. Along the way, you can lay mines, capture pillboxes that shoot at your enemies automatically, and change the terrain with your actions and the explosions you make.
Set a mine on a chokepoint, cratering the land in a chain reaction. This, in turn, can flood the valley, drowning your enemy after draining ammo and fuel first.
Forests will hide you, walls will protect you. Drive your tank onto a boat and navigate water quickly. Swamp slows you, and roads speed you. Form alliances so your turrets don't hurt your friends. The fog of war is real.
It's not a modern 3D game, so don't get fooled. It's not that, it's this.
WinBolo, actual play
Years passed. Computers got updated. Bolo got left behind on the Mac.
I did see WinBolo develop in the '90s, but I never played it. I did see a web-based version drop, but I didn't want to play that; I wanted something native to my Mac.
I can play again, though. WinBolo 2 is on Steam for multiple platforms. It's free there for Windows, Linux, and Mac, and is coming to Apple's App Store for iPad and iPhone soon.
System requirements are modest. The Windows version is basically anything 64-bit. The macOS version requires Big Sur or newer, and that's about it. It is a universal binary and is native on Apple Silicon.
If it's just you and you want to get that blast from the past, there are hundreds of maps available, and bots in the game to play against. If you get really into it, you can code your own bots with Lua.
Anyway. If you're old like me and had that compact Mac, you're probably already downloading. Get ready for good nostalgia, not trapped nostalgia poisoned by the years that have passed, which can happen in modern remakes of old games.
If you're not, this is still a very good game, a compact download, and it plays on basically any Mac released in the last decade. If you want to get weird about it, it will also run on an Intel Mac running Boot Camp made in the last 20 years.
I highly recommend Bolo. It was what taught me what was possible with networking and games.
And, it's free. If you're in Australia, go visit the Mac Museum. They apparently play Bolo there sometimes on classic hardware, as that's where the image heading this story came from.
My classic Macs are long gone. If you're still running some, you can still download Bolo for those.
