My first computer was a Commodore SX-64 'luggable' computer with an integrated 5" screen and a MOS 6510 CPU. It was magic, and a wave of nostalgia sweeps over me whenever I see a Commodore Basic startup screen with its flashing cursor at the Ready prompt. Learning how to load Jumpman at will, by punching cryptic commands into that computer, is what got me interested in computers at such an early age. It wasn't long until I started building my own x86 computers from commodity hardware, from Intel 386 SXs through Cyrix x86 clones and AMD Athelons.
CPU Wars plays right to that nostalgia weakness. Built as a card game similar to the classic game of War or other 'trump' card games, and funded through Kickstarter, CPU Wars has you pitting the specs of various processors against each other to beat your opponent. Each card is broken into sections, beginning with the processor's name, a photograph, a factoid and eight different statistics about the proc.
Each processor, from the Zilog Z80 through the AMD Phenom II, is lovingly photographed from creator Harry Mylonadis' own collection. The specs include max clock speed, max bus speed, introduction year, transistor count, data width, manufacturing process, die size and max TDP (thermal design power).
Each category has an icon which indicates whether the higher or lower value would win the battle. For example, in pitting a Motorola 68000 against a NexGen Nx586, the former's 44 mm2 die size would beat the latter's 165 mm2, but the NexGen's 111 MHz clock speed would win over the Motorola's 20 MHz.
A single deck of cards can be used between two players, and a three player game is best played with two decks. Players divide the cards amongst all players and players determine who goes first. (I recommend a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock.) Each player draws the top card from their stack. The player whose turn it is reviews their card's stats and chooses one they think has the best value. Each player reads their value and the one with the best card wins all the cards. Continue until a player wins all of the cards.
I brought the game out in the office where I work as a Network Administrator and my colleagues got pretty excited about the game. Paging through the cards, they'd have similar trips of nostalgia about long forgotten processors and their personal stories behind them. It was a fun way for us to reminisce about our shared past through the history of modern computing. One variant we came up with in the game was to use a D8 dice to decide the category for each round, adding a bit of randomness to the game.
Overall, while the game won't win any awards for its depth in strategy, CPU Wars is a cheap thrill as an expression of our nerd heritage. Revisiting old processors was fun and the stat section was surprisingly educational when comparing chips against each other. Indeed, as their website claims, this is the most fun you can have with CPU specs!
CPU Wars Volume 1.0 (£7.99 or approx. $12.79 USD, available at cpuwarsthegame.com)
Disclosure: I received two decks of CPU Wars for review.
All images from cpuwarsthegame.com
