I realized that not everyone would know these games from the names I gave them so here is a brief explanation of what each game is about.
Snake Game This has been around a very long time. I first saw it in 1983 running on a Dec Rainbow (an early attempt at a PC compatible; it wasn't very) and I'm sure Snake was around well before that, possibly as an arcade ancestor to Centipede. It plays in a rectangular arena that has a snake made up of a head plus two or three segments, each occupying one character cell on a text screen (my version will be graphical) . The snake moves one location each second and you can change direction with the cursor keys to Up, left, right or down. You must make sure that when it moves it doen't hit the wall or any other segment of the snake.This has been chosen
The big thing is, occasionally random items of food appear (some variants also have poison pills that you must avoid). If the snake eats an item of food, it gains a segement in length. As the game progresses it gets harder to avoid hitting yourself.
Risk (tm) The well known board game that has been implemented many many times. The world is split into many countries. You start with a random set of countries and get armies to place on them, Then you can attack other countries that are adjacent to yours with youra mies. You can get bonus cards that can be exchanegd for new armies and if you own all the countries on a continent then you get even more bonuses.
Empire A very old game dating from the 70s. I saw it on a mainframe in 1982, copied the rules and created my own version (the not very successful game Dark Empires) from 1986/1987. The game data used 30K out of the 40Kb available on a ZX Spectrum!
On a randomly generated and shrouded map world you start with one city. As does a computer ai opponent somewhere. You can create new armies and ships and send them out to explore the map, reveal the geography, discover your opponent's forces and fight them and discover and capture new cities where you build new armies etc. Sid Meier played a version of this (not my version I don't think!) and it inspired him to create the original Civilization.This has been chosen
Asteroids (tm). The 80s classic arcade game at which I am not very good. Huge 2d rocks swirl through space and you in your little spaceship can unelash a series of bullets at them which cause them to split into smaller ones. Your ship can rotate a full 360 degrees and you must avoid the rocks and destroy them to go onto the next screen where there are even more rocks. Occasionally an alien flying saucer will appear and try to destroy you to make things more interesting. This has been chosen
Simple Board Game There are loads to choose from and one of my favourites is 5ive Straight. (It's not Go Muku). It's old, from 1968, the only game I know that can be played with 2-9 players but best with 2,3,4 and 6.
The board has 100 peg holes, each numbered in a spiral with 1 in the center and big numbers at the outside. A deck of numbered cards from 1-100 is shuffled and players start with 4 each. You can either play a card and stick a peg in the hole with the number in (or higher) or draw a card but maximum 4. First to get 5 of their pegs in a line wins. The five ibn a row can be horizontal, diagonal or vertical but it's interesting because of the card numbering and only being able to place a peg in the corresponding numbered hole (or higher).
Hexagonal Chain Reaction The normal chain reaction is a 2 player game on a squre 10 x10 cell board where you click a cell to add one to it. When it reaches 5 (4 on the edge, 3 in the corner) it explodes and captures all non diagonal adjacvent cells, adding one to them which might cause them to explode etc. The variation here is that my version will use hexagons not squares so up to 6 adjacent can be captured.
C Robots This is a simple arena robot game where the robot creators develops robots that are programmed in a simple version of C with functions to accelerate or turn the robot, to do a radar scan for enemy robots and to fire shells at them. This is one I've wanted to do for a while but is not a trivial project. This has been chosen
Galaxian.(tm) A thirty year old arcade game that I used to play a lot.
