Master Mariner
A trading empire in 48K, one cargo at a time.
The original
A merchant-shipping game for the ZX Spectrum, from the stretch of the eighties when British bedroom publishers were working out that a game could be a spreadsheet with weather in it. You had a ship and some money. Everything after that was deciding what to carry and where, and then living with the crossing.
How it played
The loop was buy, sail, sell. A port would sell you a cargo at a price and somewhere else would want it at a better one, and the whole game was in working out where, and whether the voyage was worth the weeks it cost. Prices were not fixed: they moved while you were at sea, so a plan made at the quayside could be worth less by the time you arrived to execute it.
The sea was the other half. A crossing was not a transaction that always completed — weather and misfortune could cost you the cargo, and could cost you the ship. That risk is what stopped the game being arithmetic. A route that paid beautifully four times in a row could still bankrupt you on the fifth.
Why it holds up
It is an early, clean statement of an idea that later games spent far more memory on: that a market you cannot fully see, plus travel that takes real time, is enough to make decisions hard. No combat, no dexterity, nothing to react to. Just imperfect information and a clock.
It also understood that the fun is in the constraint. One ship means every voyage is the only voyage. You cannot diversify your way out of a bad call.
Made by
Terminal Software
First appeared
1984
On
ZX Spectrum
Genre
Trading
Taken after by
The build on this site that owes it.