Birbla

Join the discussion

Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.

Sign in
  • Hacker News
  • Oh man, we played this in computer lab in high school to pass time after we were done with our assignments. I believe it was a java/flash version though (year 2000/2001)
    by skeeterbug
  • for the 25th anniversary (approximately) I vibecoded what i wanted to do for years -- port of the original remake (yes) to JavaScript. Alive again.
    by meshko
  • Original scorch had a text file with all the sayings the tanks would "shout" out just before firing. Trading those around on BBSes was part of the fun. I still remember, "from Hell's heart I stab at thee!" which is probably from some classic literature that I don't know, lol!
    by krupan
  • I played the hell out of the original DOS game during high school in 1992 (or thereabouts, it's been a while.)
    by kylemaxwell
  • In my first job after graduation in a small company I was talking to the VP of engineering, and he mentioned offhand: "yeah, I wrote Scorch when I was in college". Mind blown.
    by skirmish
  • Scorched Earth taught me the concept of software versions. It was the first program that I ever knowingly interacted with more than one point-release of. I had version 1.0, but a friend had version 1.2. My very young mind was boggled by the concept of software being updated.
    by GavinAnderegg
  • Mother of all games. Played so much SE when I was younger, one of my all time favs.

    This version is ok but I prefer the original which is easy enough to run via dos-box, emulators of similar ilk or even online in a few places:

    https://archive.org/details/msdos_Scorched_Earth_1991

    https://dos.zone/scorched-earth/

    https://www.playdosgames.com/play/scorched-earth

    I loved turning the explosion to the max and launching Nukes or Death Head MIRVs and watching the whole screen be annihilated. Despite many clones I've never found one that really captured the feel and fun of the original. I'd love to see a faithful remake that had a larger playing area though.

    by ticulatedspline
  • 9 year old me got my first "hacking" experience out of this game. With the shareware version, you could not select the ultra tank that could shoot 3 bullets for a human, but you COULD if it were the computer player.

    The "hack": -start a game with a normal tank VS ultra computer player as p2. -save the game (as a file). -open the game file. -read the ASCII text and just flip which player has which text.

    Now, I had my ultra tank.

    by rhema

Explore Birbla archives