Multiplayer on One Keyboard 1: Triplane Turmoil

By: Jordan Magnuson

On: February 12th, 2008

Short intro: I am Flaming Pear, and I’m back. Obviously this site is Derek’s now, and I’m grateful that he’s let me return to share my two cents. I love indie gaming, and I love what Derek (and all of you) have done with this site.

Now, on to the gaming. I thought I’d start out by posting on a category of games that is under appreciated, under covered (no pun intended), and these days under produced. You know the games I’m talking about: those beautiful creations that let you sit down with your brother/mother/friend/enemy/albino pig and battle it out on one keyboard. Elbows in gut. Teeth on skin. Nails in scalp. Blood on floor. Fists pounding away.

I love these games, and I’m going to share a few of my favorites. These games aren’t new, but some of them are classics that are perhaps unknown to recent converts to indie gaming, and others of them are little gems that went largely unnoticed at their time of release.

First: Triplane Turmoil

This one is definitely a classic. Based on the (even) older classic Sopwith, Triplane Turmoil is a sidescrolling WWI dogfight simulator developed by Dodekaedron Software in 1996. The single player game lets you fly missions as England, Germany, Japan and, um, Finland, but the brilliant multiplayer mode allows up to four (that’s right, four) people to battle it out on a multi-leveled playing field that is entirely visible on one screen. The goal is simple: destroy the other players’ bases while protecting your own.

The controls take a while to master, but once you get into the swing of things (could take a good couple of hours) you will find that, like the gameplay in general, they are brilliant. There are few multiplayer gaming experiences of any kind that surpass some of the battles I’ve had with experienced TT players. The agony of outfitting your plane at the beginning of each run (do I go for speed, maneuverability, more ammo, bombs?), the challenge of keeping your plane in the air even when nobody’s shooting at you (true to WWI-era aircraft), and the sheer joy of successfully pulling off a double somersault, triple twist, back-peddling maneuver to drop a bomb on one of your opponents planes and watch it explode in midair (potentially destroying you in the process), are moments I will no doubt be yelling about in the nursing home when I get there.

Download Triplane Turmoil from the DOS Games Archive (Free, 1.94 MB).

You’ll probably want to run the game using DOSBox (a wonderful emulator, if you don’t already have it).

Posted in Action, Freeware, Highly Recommended, Multiplayer, Windows | Tags: Dodekaedron

Xander

I’m hoping Marshmallow Duel shows up sometime here, sounds like a great feature! Be sure to check out ‘Mr. Blocko: Super Tournament Edition’, it’s been a great recent addition to the Same-Screen Multiplayer style games.

And welcome back! Glad to see the pear still burns strong.
Petri Purho

Triplain FTW!

One of my favorite freeware games back in the day. The developers (some of them at least) have created a sequel to the game. http://www.draconus.com/games/triplane2/

Don’t know how well it plays because it didn’t want to work on my computer.
raigan

i don’t know why there are so many freeware platformers, but no one has bothered to make a really awesome biplane game.. both sopwith and TT are amazing.
Derek

THE PEAR STILL BURNS!
crackers

“Fists pounding all the way” sounds pretty hot, not the kind of game one would want to play when the local vicar pops round for a cuppa though. There’s be a lot of red faces and general awkwardness going about there.
Xion

Hell yeah hotseat ftmfw. Time me and my bro had some quality time again after years away from liero.
haowan

WELCOME BACK FLAMINGPEAR
Morris

Couple of “good games gone unnoticed nowadays”-suggestions:

GeneRally and Pizza Worm
http://generally.rscsites.org/
http://www.saunalahti.fi/zorlim/pizza_worm/

Especially Pizza Worm :)
Joystick

Pnickies and Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo are two similar intense and nonviolent falling block arcade games by Capcom, easily playable in emulators, that require only 4 direction keys per player.

Liquid War (http://www.ufoot.org/liquidwar/) also requires only a directional control and squeezes the last drop of competitive spirit from 2 to 6 players.

Gravity Strike (http://www.gravity-strike.de) is a great refinement of the classic Space War theme, but went overboard with level scripting with the last release over two years ago.

Other hotseat games include Liero and clones such as NiL and Gusanos, and whole series like Micro Machines and Worms.
Wulfo

Thanks for this feature, it’s a great idea.
PHeMoX

@Morris: GeneRally is pretty well known.

I loved Sopwith, so I’m definitely going to check this one out.
gsm

My friends and I always use JoyToKey for these games, which is freely available online. Just google JoyToKey!

Also, you should cover Mine Bomber. Now there’s an awesome one keyboard game.
Chris

Awsome! Been hunting games like these to play with my friend during our game-weekends and will need them in the future when I am introducing my “better half” into gaming ;) If we can play them together it certainly is a easy way to show how fun it can be.

Will definatly keep a close eye for further installments of this feature.
JW

Wow, attention for this stuff. :) Someone should set up some kind of board/thing for 1 pc multiplayer games. I myself am working on one, and because people on the internet mostly lack friends, it is hard to get any good feedback from people that have played it against a living person.
CM

I have fond childhood memories of playing multiplayer-games-on-one-keyboard with friends, but they seem to consist mostly of bickering over who’s blocking whose input by mashing too many keys at once. Huh.
JakKr

Great. It’s a good idea starting to write on this category. It’s hard to find one keyboard 2 player games when you want to play one.
Voodoo Master

Welcome back, Flaming Pear! (I haven’t been here for you but I’m still glad to welcome you back)

I’ve always liked hotseat games, gonna try this one out as soon as I can.
Shane Levin

Definetly mention lieroX and cortex command
ags

One of my favourite and most-played “shared keyboard” games is Jph Wacheski’s Wizard of Wor Remix. I think it improves greatly on the original arcade game.

Home of the Underdogs has an excellent article on these kind of games.
MisterX

I never really played Triplane Turmoil, I just played the first singleplayer missions and it seems to be quite a nice game. Simple, but nicely done :)

I totally got to agree with Xander, though, Marshmallow Duel got be in this special, at least in case you actually know it Flaming Pear. I’d say its classic-status is en par with Triplane Turmoil, as it’s also been developed in the mid-90s, later became freeware and is similiarly simple but brilliantly done. Truly digging it you just find out that even those simple games can be incredibly “in-depth” :)
I just couldn’t really ever figure out how this weird leveling system works..
Derek

Hai guys, I already covered Marshmallow Duel… ;__;

http://tigsource.com/articles/2007/06/11/classic-marshmallow-duel

But it’s worth revisiting because it’s awesome! ^__^
Jordan

Thanks for the welcomes, and for the suggestions. Keep ’em coming. :)
MisterX

Ah, well, that was before my active time here Derek :D I should really dig through the whole archive some time.. man, indie gaming is huge :D

Well, on the topic I got to add that it’s just too bad I couldn’t play such games with any of my few friends. Hell, one even complained about how one could have a modern PC capable of running Crysis and then still play an (awesomely beautiful?!) game like Aquaria on it *sigh*
Jasper Byrne

Veru odd because I’m working on a new version of a game which I’ve been developing since ’92 called ‘Trip’ a triangle spaceship dogfighter originally based on the Amiga bi-plane game, Bip. It’s a bit more aimed at head-to-head play, with a Street Fighter II -style philosophy.

Hope it to one day grace the pages of TIGsource!
Blaa

Mine Bombers – simply THE best one keyb multiplayer game ever made. Cover that biatcheez!
Jordan

Let me know when your game is released Jasper: I’d love to take a look!

Jordan
http://ithamore.blogspot.com/ ithamore

Jordan, it’s nice to see that your fire is still burning brightly. Welcome back.
rz.

i had some sopwith-clone game that was featured on tigsource but i totally forget what it was called. halp?
Gretta Bayron

Very interesting. Thanks!