Fireball Fight

After Pat reminded us of our shamefully bare Pergola Webpage, I said in a previous letter that we should be proud of our subculture, and share stories of our heritage, lest we forget. I'll start by recounting a game that I had almost forgotten, and remembered only by chance in a passing conversation... the game known as FIREBALL FIGHT.

I'm sure all of us know how to play Rock-Paper-Scissors, called Ja-Ken-Poi by many. You choose a sigil and reveal it simultaneously with your opponent, and the winner is decided by the heiarchy of interaction of the sigils.

There's a slightly more complex variation that became popular around 1995, (and for all I know is still used in playgrounds today): DragonBall. The possible moves are:

Charge - gain one charge
Attack - at the cost of two charges, deal one damage to your opponent
Block - Cancel an attack

The dynamics are slightly different from RPS since the only way to win is by making an attack, and the only way to attack is to accumulate charges.


Fireball Fight took the concept a step further by adding more moves:

Move(cost) - effect

Charge(0) - gain one charge

Attack(2) - deal one damage

Block(0) - cancel any offensive move without a special attribute

Steal(1) - if unblocked, gain two charges and your opponent loses one (minimum zero). High priority, so it may cause your opponent's spell to fail if he now lacks charges.

MegaBlast(5) - deal one damage. Super Type: is not cancelled by Block(0)

MegaBlock(1) - Block any offensive move without a special attribute and also SuperTypes

DoubleAttack(5) - deal two damage

ArcLightning(3) - Does nothing now. Next turn, you perform DoubleAttack (at no cost) in addition to any other move.

Heal(3) - gain one life

MirroredMalice(4) - Cancels any offensive move by your opponent with Normal or Super Types. If it does, the effects of such a move are done to your opponent instead

Domination(7) - Tell your opponent what to do on his next turn

Haste(10?) - For the next three(?) turns, perform an additional action immediately after(?) your opponent reveals his move


There were other moves too... I'm sure there was an array of "Psychic" effects, because I remember waving my arms around like a sine wave. Also there were more "enchantments" that worked like Haste. Gah. Maybe one of the other players can help fill in the blanks? It's actually an incredibly fun game, if you don't mind looking like an idiot.

I hope I'm inspiring our game developers here. (I wouldn't mind playing it on Java, if you could make a good AI... or several mediocre ones).



I am chicomanasan.