Family Computing Magazine

[cavalier973]

We used to subscribe to this; I spent so many hours poring over the various advertisements and articles on computer games.

Now, I can do it all again.

[Turd Ferguson]

[cavalier973]

[cavalier973]

[cavalier973]

One of my favorite ads; can one write a better teaser for financial simulation software than that first sentence?:



All three games are abandonware, now, but you can't get them to work unless you get the vMac versions.  The DOS based Millionaire II works, and is a better game than the original.  According to an article in an earlier edition of Family Computing, Merrill Lynch used all three games to train its brokers.  Games were programmed by Jim Zuber.

[cavalier973]

^^^Millionaire is the most challenging of the three.  You begin with $10,000, and can only buy stock (and sell it, once you've bought it).  Once you reach a net worth of $12,000, you can buy on margin (50%).  Once you reach $18,000, you can buy call options.  At the next level (I don't remember what it is), you can buy puts.  And at the top level, you can buy on margin (10%).  In Millionaire 2, the top level allows you to sell short.  It's possible to go from $10,000 to $1 million within the allotted 77 weeks, but everything has to work just right.  The market conditions are randomly generated, so you might wind up starting out in a bear market, which means you get to the $12,000 goalpost too late.  At the $18,000 goal post, you can start to make the real money, because of call options. 

Tycoon is commodities speculation, and it's the easiest of the three games to get to $1 million by playing it as it is supposed to be played.  The margin levels are incredible.  You are allowed only to invest in wheat, soybeans, cattle, and pork bellies starting out, then expand into heating oil, cocoa, gold, silver, T-bills, and Japanese Yen (and several other commodities).

Baron is both the hardest and the easiest of the games to get to $1 million, and I don't think one can get from the $35,000 initial capital to $1 million within the 5 year game time allotted.  If you play Baron as it is supposed to be played--by buying and selling properties--you will wonder how in the world people become millionaires in this field.  The secret, I guess, is using the equity in one property to get loans to acquire other property, and so forth.
But Baron has an in-game feature that allows one to purchase second mortgages.  Since the game was programmed in the 1980's, the rate on a second mortage can be anywhere from 12% to 18%, and these things never default.  So you have 12%-18% compounded over five years.  When you finish, your info is saved for the next game.  You do the same thing.  At the end of 20 years, you have $1 million.

There was a fourth game, called Squire, that incorporated elements from the three games listed above, but I can't find it.  American Dream was also by Blue Chip Software, and it was a management simulation; I cannot find it, either.