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Bolo Atari ST 1987 Meinolf Schneider


Bolo Block-breaker



Meinolf Schneider of Germany released Bolo on the Atari ST in 1987. Bolo is a block-breaker game that predates the 16-bit Arkanoid conversions of 1988.

Bolo was conceived, designed, drawn and composed by Meinolf Schneider.

The difference between Bolo and Breakout clones such as Arkanoid is that in Bolo the bat can be moved vertically on the playfield, not just horizontally. Players can smoothly sweep the bat over the entire playfield, obstructions-permitting. In Bolo the bat is called a paddle and the levels are called rooms (of a castle).

In theory the added control of the paddle reduces the challenge, but in practice Bolo is no easier than most other Breakout clones. The ball can be knocked hard about the playfield or gently guided. In addition, the ball can come to complete rest on the paddle and even remain stationary when the paddle is moved away from beneath the ball. On the other hand, the ball can be inadvertently knocked downward to the bottom of the playfield by the paddle, resulting in life-loss.

Atari ST Bolo displays in monochrome 640x400. Bolo was developed on the MegaMax Modula-2 software development system.

The Bolo ball is drop-shadowed and impact-points are highlighted by animated glints.

Bolo controls are precise and its graphics and sound effects are crisp and clear.

Bolo consists of 50 levels.

Bolo's intro evokes a cinematic presentation and plays a sample of Also Sprach Zarathustra of 1896 by Richard Strauss.

Bolo was distributed by Application Systems Heidelberg on 1x 3.5" diskette.

Bolo IBM PC MS-DOS 1995



Dongleware Verlags GmBH released Bolo on IBM PC MS-DOS 5.0 in 1995. PC Bolo was conceived by Meinolf Schneider, programmed by Thomas Güdelhöfer, composed by Nik Tyndall and illustrated by Pascal Heiler.

PC Bolo requires 8 megs of RAM and displays in 16-color SVGA 640x400 and features a super-smooth hardware mouse cursor and ball-racket movement. PC Bolo employs accurate ball physics and simulates gravitational pull.

The object of Bolo is to defeat 50 rooms of a castle and face off against the Mega-Ghost.

PC Bolo audio supports 8-bit 11 KHz mono Sound Blaster, 16-Bit 22 KHz stereo Sound Blaster and "3D sound" via RSS (Roland Space Sound) System.

PC Bolo was distributed on 1x CD-ROM. There is no installer required.

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