Armoured Alliance
- Home Page
- http://www.indy.net/~homenet/aa/aa.html
- Author
- Joel Duerksen aka Plastic Fist
- Status
- Game is finished but may never be released.
- Download Information
- Not available for download.
- This page was last revised Apr 6, 1999
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Armoured Alliance
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PC Bolo / Armoured Alliance is by far the oldest and most complete of the Bolo Clone projects. Like all clones, however, it is not available for download. The author, Joel Duerksen aka "Plastic Fist," is a professional software developer. He first started the project as a hobby in the early 90s. The original version was a direct clone of Bolo with an appearance identical to the real thing. Later, in an effort to distance himself from Bolo and minimize legal repercussions, Joel changed the look and feel of the game, giving it totally new graphics but maintaining the same structure and rules of the game. This new incarnation was renamed Armoured Alliance, or AA.
Written for DOS, AA can be played on all PCs running all variants of Windows. Like Bolo was for Macs, AA was one of the first network games for PCs. You could play multi-player games over local networks via IPX or over the Internet via KALI. AA was completed in the mid-90s after many years of private beta testing. This secrecy was required due to Joel's sensitivity to the legal conflicts underlying this clone effort. During those years, public anticipation for PC Bolo / AA rose to a fever pitch, with almost daily angry diatribes on rec.games.bolo and #bolo demanding the immediate release of the game. Because of the long delays and hype, AA's detractors even nicknamed it "Arumoured Alliance" and there were constant hoaxes and jokes from people clamoring "I HAVE PC BOLO AND I WILL RELEASE!!!!!"
In its final form, AA has all of Bolo's functionality, including full networking ability tested to be playable even with 4 or more modem players, something that Mac Bolo cannot accomplish. Unfortunately, AA was never released as a result of failed negotiations between Joel and Stuart Cheshire, the author of the original Bolo for Macs. The project is now effectively dead.
Here are some other pages with information on AA.
