I remember once talking to the head of game development at one of the top video game developers in the world and asking him when they would remake M.U.L.E. He looked at me a little quizzically, but then had a look of fond reminescence and said, “yeah… that would be a good idea.” He never did anything else with the thought, and within a year he was no longer at the company. I’m not implying that there was any connection, but I have to imagine that any executive brave enough to remake M.U.L.E. properly (even as a more casual-ish game in today’s parlance) would get the accolades of the industry and its followers. (Yes, I know about this.)

Oh… you don’t know what M.U.L.E. is? M.U.L.E. (named after the Multi Use Labor Element mining robots that were central to the game) was a videogame for the Atari 400/800 written by Dan Bunten (who has a super interesting story). I played it on my Atari 800. And it really opened my mind to what a video game could do. It was the first multi-player experience I’d had (all through one interface), and it was an economic simulation about mining natural resources and manipulating the market to get the most for your collected resources. Environmental impact on the planet Irata (Atari backwards) aside, the game was super fun. You were playing with someone else, it wasn’t about coordination, and the funky oddball music (here’s the Bitblaster mix) was excellent and catchy.

So much about computers was such new and incredible territory at the time. Around every corner there was a new experience that took your breath away and expanded your mind about what kind of experiences were possible. And it was all way cool. I wish there were more experiences today that gave you the same sense of wonder and possibility about technology that in retrospect seemed so frequent back then. But perhaps I’m just romanticizing.