Oil Barons

Oil Barons
Cover art of Oil Barons
Developer(s)	Epyx
Publisher(s)	Epyx
Designer(s)	Tom Glass
Platform(s)	Apple II series Commodore 64 DOS
Release date(s)	1983
Genre(s)	Business Simulation/Strategy
Mode(s)	Single-player Multi-player

Oil Barons on the Commodore 64

Oil Barons is both a strategy and simulation-type, turn-based game, published by Epyx in 1983. It was released in versions compatible with the Apple II series, Commodore 64, and DOS varieties of home computer.^[1] It is considered to be one of the rarest of all Epyx games.^[2]

Oil Barons represents an unusual fusion between a computer game and a board game, in that it included a game board consisting of a 50 X 40 square grid, as well as numerous individual game tokens, used to denote the significance of various grid locations (which corresponded to various terrain-specific locations within the game). Oil Barons was thus much like a numerically complex board game, in which the computer kept track of the numerous variables. The game could be played in any one of several modes, and with from one to eight players. Unfortunately, the fact this game has been out-of-print since the mid-1980s, and thus very few people today have an Oil Barons game board and tokens (particularly in light of the fact that only a very small number of copies were sold when it was in publication), potentially limits the game's appeal in contemporary times.

References

1. ^ Oil Barons from Moby Games (retrieved on November 12, 2008).
2. ^ Oil Barons from Home of the Underdogs (retrieved on November 12, 2008).