1991 · Martech · Role-playing · Text adventure

TradeWars 2002

Trade Wars 2002 is a classic BBS door game that has been actively played since the late 1980s. The player controls a spaceship in a Star Trek-inspired universe, trading resources at a profit to build up a space empire of planets and space stations. It was later adapted to play over the internet and external tools were built to automate repetitive tasks. The game is still playable on many web BBSes today.

Released: 1 June 1991
Platforms: MS-DOS
Genres: Role-playing Text adventure
Developers: Martech
Publishers: Martech
Modes: MMO Multiplayer Single-player
Perspective: Text
Themes: Science fiction

About

Trade Wars is a series of video games dating back to 1984. The video games are inspired by Hunt the Wumpus, the board game Risk, and the original space trader game Star Trader.

Keywords

spaceship
resource gathering
planet

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Though specifics vary between versions, in general the player is a trader in a galaxy with a fixed set of other players (either human or computer). The players seek to gain control of resources: usually fuel ore, food, and equipment, and travel through sectors of the galaxy trading them for money or undervalued resources. Players use their wealth to upgrade their spaceship with better weapons and defenses, and fight for control of planets and star bases.

Since the basics of the game structure are numerical, these games are not reliant on high resolution graphics or rapid processing, which makes them ideally suited to low-resource computing platforms.

Development

The first game with the title, Trade Wars, by Chris Sherrick, was developed in BASIC for the TRS-80 Model II, and soon ported, by Sherrick, to the IBM PC for the Nochange BBS system in 1984. Sherrick conceived his game as a cross between Dave Kaufman's BASIC program Star Trader (1974), the board game Risk, and Gregory Yob's Hunt the Wumpus (1972).

Because Sherrick released his earliest versions with a free license, many variations of the game appeared over the next few years, including TWV - Galactic Armageddon, Yankee Trader, and TW2 (a development of the original by John Morris who took over from Chris Sherrick).

Reception

Computer Gaming World in 1993 rated Trade Wars two points out of three, stating that for many players "there is no

other on-liner than Trade Wars ... This game will be around for a while, in one form or another".

Legacy

Trade Wars 2002 was named the 10th best PC game of all time by PC World Magazine in 2009.

Trade Wars is cited as an influence by game developers including Paul Sage, lead designer of Ultima Online, Josh Johnston, lead programmer of Jumpgate, Eric Wang, producer of Earth & Beyond, and Pete Mackay, a designer of Star Citizen.