Oil Barons is both a strategy and simulation-type, turn-based game, published by Epyx

Epyx

Epyx, Inc. was a video game developer and publisher in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. The company was founded as Automated Simulations by Jim Connelley and Jon Freeman, originally using Epyx as a brand name for action-oriented games before renaming the company to match in 1983...

 in 1983

1983 in video gaming

-Events:* A major shakeout of the video game industry begins. By 1986, total video games sales will decrease from US$3.2 billion to US$0.1 billion.* MCA Universal files suit against Nintendo, claiming that the latter company's video arcade hit Donkey Kong violated Universal's copyright on King Kong...

. It was released in versions compatible with the Apple II series

Apple II series

The Apple II series is a set of 8-bit home computers, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977 with the original Apple II...

, Commodore 64

Commodore 64

The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...

, and DOS

MS-DOS

MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...

 varieties of home computer

Personal computer

A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...

. It is considered to be one of the rarest of all Epyx games.

Oil Barons represents an unusual fusion between a computer game

Personal computer game

A PC game, also known as a computer game, is a video game played on a personal computer, rather than on a video game console or arcade machine...

 and a board game

Board game

A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...

, in that it included a game board consisting of a 50 X 40 square grid, as well as numerous individual game tokens, used to denote the significance of various grid locations (which corresponded to various terrain

Terrain

Terrain, or land relief, is the vertical and horizontal dimension of land surface. When relief is described underwater, the term bathymetry is used...

-specific locations within the game). Oil Barons was thus much like a numerically complex board game, in which the computer kept track of the numerous variables. The game could be played in any one of several modes, and with from one to eight players. Unfortunately, the fact this game has been out-of-print since the mid-1980s

1980s

File:1980s decade montage.png|thumb|400px|From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, Columbia, lifted off in 1981; American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev eased tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the end of the Cold War; The Fall of the Berlin Wall in...

, and thus very few people today have an Oil Barons game board and tokens (particularly in light of the fact that only a very small number of copies were sold when it was in publication), potentially limits the game's appeal in contemporary times.

External links

• Images of Oil Barons box, manual and game board from C64Sets.com