The Bilestoad

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The Bilestoad
Developer(s)	Marc Goodman
Publisher(s)	Datamost
Designer(s)	Marc Goodman
Platform(s)	Apple II
Release date	1982
Genre(s)	Combat
Mode(s)	Single player
Rating(s)	N/A
Media	5¼" disk
Input methods	Keyboard

The Bilestoad is a computer game by Marc Goodman (credited as "Mangrove Earthshoe") for the Apple II platform, released in 1982 by Datamost.

[edit] Premise

In The Bilestoad, players control "meatlings" that hack and battle with axes and shields from a top-view perspective. The name is derived from the German words Beil (axe) and Tod (death). The odd spelling reflects Goodman's idea of a future language similar to A Clockwork Orange's Nadsat in which English has been modified by the phonetic borrowing of foreign words ^[1]. Although the game may seem medieval, the backstory in the manual explains that the axe fighting is actually a future virtual reality game designed to reduce real violence.

[edit] Game play

The Bilestoad allows a human player to fight against either a computer-controlled opponent or another human; one can also pit two robots against each other. Movement and combat is accomplished with the keyboard, pressing keys to swing the gladiator's axe or shield outwards or inwards, or to make the gladiator turn, stop or walk. The game play is quite violent and bloody -- players lop off their opponents' shield or sword arms, and dispatch them by decapitation.

The Bilestoad is played entirely from a top-down view. Note the three automaps to the right, showing (from the top) close, medium, and long views of the island.

The arena of combat is a small island, maps of which (at short, medium, and long range) are shown at the right side of the screen. Scattered around the arena are various objects, including yin/yang discs that you can stand on to accelerate your movement, stars that transport you to other points in the arena, and "faces" that let you leave the level. The game offers more strategic variation than many fighting games, letting the player run away and be chased around the island. The musical soundtrack begins with a bizarre, ponderous, off-key re-working of Beethoven's "Für Elise".

According to the author, influences for The Bilestoad include the movie Excalibur and Monty Python and the Holy Grail ^[2]

[edit] Controls

Players control the gladiators using two groupings of keys -- one on the left side of the keyboard, the other on the right.

On many emulators such as AppleWin the open-apple and closed-apple keys are simulated with the left ALT and right ALT keys, respectively. (The open-apple and closed-apple keys were likely chosen to controlling walking as they produced "control button" signals for joysticks or paddles rather than key presses; the Apple II could only register a single key press at a time.)

[edit] Legacy

The game was an inspiration for the 1998 hack-and-slash Windows game Die by the Sword.

[edit] Notes