Dope Wars (DOS)

Dos was nice.

For those too young to remember or too old to care, Dos was what life would be like if the address bar in your browser stretched downward into infinity.

For a character typed in Dos, this infinity was the very fabric of the known universe and anything that said character would hope to achieve would need to be achieved within the very limited parameters of Dos-world.

There were games, sure. Lots of golf ones - and battle chess. But the game above games which defines Dos for me is Dope Wars.

You'll find an open source version online if you look for it. You will also find flash clones - one in particular called 'Dealer' which replicates the game mechanically if not capturing its simple charm.

Basic premise is as follows; a game lasts 30 days. Each day you will choose a suburb of New York to travel to and buy or sell drugs. The price of each narcotic fluctuates with each day, and so if you were to buy cocaine in The Bronx for £15,000 per unit on a Monday, and sell it in Manhattan on Tuesday after the cops make a coke bust and prices go 'through the roof,' you will make a killing.

After 30 days, your total balance is posted to the top scores list and can be used as a yardstick to measure the efficiency of your drug dealing.

The main problem is that Dope Wars puts forward the laughable notion that selling drugs is more interesting than using them.

Now, where is my crack-pipe.