#033 - Bull: Textual Tauromachy

Release Date: July 1973

Platform: Mainframe (BASIC Type-In)

Genre: Sports

Developer(s): David Sweet, Walter J. Koetke (and students)

Publisher(s): Digital Equipment Corporation

Ever wanted to be a bull fighter? No? Me neither. Not a fan of risking my life for entertainment's sake. Bullfighting is something of a disgraced sport these days, due to changing views on animal cruelty. Regardless of what anyone thinks of it as a blood sport, it remains a national, cultural spectacle in Spain and across Latin America, with a long, storied history across the Iberian peninsula, and also possibly holds ancient roots.

Combat sports involving animals have a history that goes well-beyond Spain's form of bullfighting. Of course, there were animals involved in the Roman gladiatorial arena - bulls included. Even further back than that, however, is evidence of the ancient Minoan people in Crete (we're talking ~1,500 B.C. here) engaging in some sort of bullfighting games. A Minoan fresco was discovered that pictured three individuals engaging with a bull in various manners - one grabbing the horns, and another cartwheeling over its back.

Where exactly in time Spain's particular form of tauromachy (that's one of my new favourite words, by the way) appeared seems to be entirely lost to us. It evolved over the centuries as the different ruling parties modified the bullfighting games, first the Visigoths, and then the Muslims. It seems as if the tradition solidified somewhat into organised tournaments in the 11th century A.D., where bullfights commonly took place with the matador on horseback, equipped with a lance - still very different from the stereotypical idea we have of the caped matador doing the dance of death with the bull on foot. In Spain specifically, this format persisted for roughly 600 years before the transition to on-foot bullfighting occurred. Horseback bullfighting persisted in neighbouring Portugal, despite the changes occurring in Spain. Bullfighting also carried over with the Spanish and Portuguese into Latin America.

That's enough of a real-world history lesson for today. Moving on to digital-world history, we have the first video game adaptation of the sport (or some would say art) of bullfighting. Bull, or Bullfight as it's called in the microcomputer edition of 101 BASIC Games, went through a few hands before landing in David Ahl's book. 

Bull - 1, Matador - 0

The original author of Bull is David Sweet of Dartmouth College. It's unknown whether Sweet was a student or faculty at the college, nor when he programmed Bull, as there's no indication of this in the source code. It's evident that Bull was around prior to July 1973, as the game somehow made its way into the hands of Walter J. Koetke, who had his students at Lexington High School, MA, convert it into BASIC, after which it ended up with David Ahl, and included in 101 BASIC Games. Steve North would then modify it again for the microcomputer edition of the book. Koetke was a pioneering educator through the 70s and 80s for his work in integrating computers into education, and Bull is the first of 20 games he had some involvement in that we know of (according to MobyGames.) We'll see later on in 1973 the first couple of games he wrote, but he's more active in the 80s after the microcomputer revolution.

Where's the fun cartoons?

Bull tries to make a somewhat in-depth attempt to simulate a fight. Not only does it include several moves and options for you, the matador, to choose from, but the matador's assistants are also included in the gameplay - the toreadores and picadores. Although, I'm not sure this is entirely accurate. From my research, the assistants are known as picadores and banderilleros, not toreadores. That being said, I knew absolutely nothing about bullfighting prior to writing this article, so I may be completely wrong about everything. Feel free to correct my understanding in the comments.

Back to the game, when you start, the first phases of the fight are generated randomly, and you must react based on how the fight has gone up to then. The bull and the performances of your assistants vary in quality, and your assistants can even be killed by the bull! Boy, this game isn't messing around... 

Here's the lowdown, "bloodlover." That's the name of my new metal band.

I was rather fortunate on my first go - I drew an "awful" bull. Even the game thought that was lucky. The picadores did alright in the first round, but one of my toreadores was killed in round 2. May his noble sacrifice never be forgotten - whoever he was.

Fire my toreadores.

In order to get my bearings, I played it safe when it came to my turn in the ring. While the bull was charging I opted for the safest option, the regular cape swirl. Once it calmed down after the first couple of passes, I went for progressively more dangerous moves. 

I think I'm doing well? Haven't died yet, so must be.

The game recommends not going for the kill until the seventh pass, so that's what I did, opting for the over the horns kill. I was indeed successful, living to fight another day. The crowd seemed pleased, and awarded me "ONE EAR OF THE BULL" as my prize. Doesn't seem like much of a reward, but I did play it safe, to be fair to them. Might make a good chew toy for my dog - if I had a dog.

The moment you've all been waiting for.

Probably warrants a few more goes to see where the limits are. Taking a peek at the source code indicates that there are four different awards the crowd can give you after a fight - alive or dead doesn't matter.

1. If you do poorly, you get nothing at all.
2. A successful but safe fight will award you one ear of the bull.
3. A brave fight will award you both ears of the bull.
4. For outstanding bravery, the crowd will chant "OLE! YOU ARE 'MUY HOMBRE'!! OLE! OLE!"

This is what happens if you choose the coward's way out.

After a few attempts, I got all of these outcomes. Most of the time, if you get a "superb" bull, you're going to die within the first few passes no matter what you do. The game is actually quite merciless - it's very unlikely that you'll get a successful kill, and will die more often than not. The nice thing is that most rounds take no more than 30 seconds to complete, so it's pretty easy to do a whole bunch of tries in one go.

You don't need to survive to earn the highest honour.

That run above was quite the exciting one. I was gored several times, but kept getting back up. Never gonna keep me down! Eventually was able to get to the moment of killing the bull, but failed. The crowd rightfully acknowledged by bravery, as you can see above. It took a lot of attempts to get this result, and I wouldn't want to try for a result like this but where I successfully kill the bull. The game outcomes are mostly up to chance, as far as I can tell, with your chances getting worse the perkier the bull is.

Well, the crowd's given their verdict. Now it's time for mine.

Time Played: 15 minutes

My initial estimate was 20, but all the recorded files come out closer to 15. Rounds go by so quickly - many in a matter of seconds.

Difficulty: 4 (Mild)

It's hard to quantify Bull's difficulty. On the one hand, it's very difficult to get a round where you get to the bull kill, and even more difficult to get the bull kill instead of just dying. On the other hand, how much of this difficulty is in the player's hands is highly questionable. Between the random game setup and likelihood to succeed or fail dependent on that and also your move choices, is a whole lot of random chance. So, I can't completely rule out the game's challenge, but I also don't want to overstate it, since most of it, in my opinion, is up to the RNG being nice to you.

Gameplay: 3

The more and more I though about the game design, the worse Bull became in my eyes. It's a lot like Slalom, in that, once you know the right sequence of moves to choose, it becomes a matter of just brute force playing the game over and over again until you win. Only there's far less nuance with Bull - so much so that it ends up in an "illusion of choice" type of situation. On the surface, it offers a variety of scenarios with the random generation at the start, and multiple ways to react to that situation. However, the game rewards riskier play, and because rounds are so short, it encourages you to only take the riskiest option, no matter the scenario, until it works. Banging your head against the brick wall until it cracks, to analogise it. I have other "illusion of choice" games scored at a 3, so that's where Bull will go also. It's not bad enough to go with the 1s and 2s.

Controls: 5

Nothing really of note here - standard inputs for the time.

Visual: 1

Also nothing of note here. Very plain and standard for the time. A reminder that text-based games go at a 1/10 score at base when they don't do anything beyond just present the text in plain fashion.

Functionality: 5

No problems here.

Accessibility: 3

Going to put this at the standard 3/5 for text-based games. Requires solid reading ability.

Fun Factor: 4

Probably more fun than the game is well-designed. It helps that it's quite humorous and has plenty of personality in the writing. Short rounds, while detrimental to game design, are great for replay value. In the moment, I found myself playing dozens of rounds without even really thinking about whether I was bored or not. Would I go back to the game after playing it in that moment? No, probably not. It's crippling lack of depth, paired with the "illusion of choice" problem prevents it from raising any higher in my esteem.

I award Bull with a score of 21. This mediocre tauromachy earns an E-tier finish, and one ear of the bull for effort. It's smack-bang in the middle of the tier, but wins the tiebreaker with the other 21s on Fun Factor, making it 21st overall at the time of writing. How fitting. It's all about which game I'd rather play again in the end.

Next week, I have something special for you all. I'll be taking a break from the 1973 coverage to complete and release the long-delayed PLATO overview. If you don't know about PLATO, you're going to be amazed at how ahead of its time it was.