Explode

Explode! Imagine there is a game called "Explode"! (or Eksplodere in Norway) In any case, this name promises lots of action, but it can't deliver the game itself. It's a board game, and it doesn't seem quite stupid. But immediately I notice that the game is characterized by the same laziness as very much else in this 75 Spill Datatronic package. It starts by asking you if you want to see "rules". And these "rules" are completely impossible to understand. Here, Data-Tronic has done a miserable job. Say what you want about what to expect from "75 good games", but this product was actually sold for money. This was a port of a BBC Micro game, Hexplode, coded by J. Ansel and was modified for the C64 and then again for the Norway market. The game is actually pretty clever and could have been a highlight in the package if Data-Tronic hadn't scratched the translation so badly. Hexplode is played by 2 players on a board of hexagonal tiles. The players take turns to place a counter on the board, they can only play a counter in an empty tile or a tile they already own. When the number of counters on a given tile equals the number of adjacent tiles the tile hexplodes and the contents of the tile are equally distributed to its neighbours changing the ownership of neighbouring counters over to the current player in the process. This process can often generate a chain reaction. The winner is the player that removes all of their opponents counters from the board.