International Bridge Contractors

DOS title screen.

International Bridge Contractors is a text-based simulation game developed by Philip Case and published as TRS-80 BASIC source code in SoftSide magazine in April, 1981. The game was later ported to the Atari 8-bit by Patrick Maloney and to the Commodore 64 and MS-DOS by William Hileman who released the source for free. The MS-DOS port version 1.10 is the most complex version.

In the game, you play the as the temporary CEO of a bridge building company who must run the show while the CEO is on vacation. The goal of the game is to make shrewd business deals to impress the board of directors enough to become the permanent chairman of the board. The game is divided into phases where you hire workers and buy materials, bid on bridge contracts, and read the news for events that might affect your business. It's very similar to the game Lemonade Stand, but with a more adult theme.

Personal

I played this game with my cousin who had a copy of the MS-DOS port published by Keypunch Software. My siblings and his siblings would sometimes play the game in multi-player mode. I don't think we ever beat the game in this way, but we had fun with it. One day, while playing around with the game, we left a battery on the keyboard for hours so the game would buy materials nonstop putting us further and further into debt. When we finally came back, we saw that the game had crashed due to a variable overflow, which we though was funny. I would sometimes play the game by myself when I was bored, and I remember beating it in the 1990s.

Status

The MS-DOS port is open source. I have beaten it.

Review

2	3	2	1	4

Best Version: DOS

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• For 1981, this was a pretty decent game for home computers. It'd keep you and some friends busy for awhile.
• Although the original news events are all serious (and dull), some of the news events in the DOS port are silly and hilarious.
• The DOS port was released in the public domain with source, so you could alter it any way you like.

Bad

• The DOS port allows color customization, which is nice, but all the text on the screen is the same color, which is difficult on the eyes. Better use of color would have helped the game.
• The random news events swing wildly in each version. Some events only change your account in the hundreds of dollars, while others affect it by the millions. In the latest DOS version, changes are often in the hundreds of millions. This often makes the game more about getting a lucky event early on than skill. I once played the game without ever buying a single thing, and still ended up winning because I randomly got enough workers and materials to win big contracts.
• Even with the added random events of the DOS port, by the time you've played the game for a hour or so, you'll have seen them all.

Ugly

• All of the ports are media challenged lacking graphics and sound.
• There is very little to do with the original game. The later ports add a bit more variety in the random news events, but that's it.

Media

Documentation

• 

  SoftSide April, 1981 cover.

• 

  SoftSide source, page 1.

• 

  SoftSide source, page 2.

• 

  SoftSide source, page 3.

Screenshots

• 

  Title screen.

• 

  Purchasing phase.

Download

The author of the DOS port released his game and source as public domain.

• Download (Info) - DOS version 1.10.

Credits

Role	Staff
Designer	Philip Case
Programmer	Philip Case
Atari 8-bit Porter	Patrick Maloney
DOS Porter	William Hileman

Links