Achtung, die Kurve!, also known as Curve Fever or simply Achtung, is a freeware, multiplayer snake game for MS-DOS. It supports two to eight players simultaneously.[1] The game is a clone of another Czech game Červi (Worms) from 1993, differing in that the lines now have holes. Author is Filip Oščádal, aka Fred Brooker, from the Czech Republic who made this game, together with Kamil Doležal, for Commodore Amiga including music, sound effects and graphical background (worm speed depending on the picture). The game was written in Motorola 68000 assembly. The title is in German.
| Achtung, die Kurve! | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Filip Oščádal Kamil Doležal |
| Platform(s) | Amiga, MS-DOS |
| Release | 1993, 1995 |
| Genre(s) | Snake |
| Mode(s) | Multiplayer |
Players leave a trail and try to make the opponent hit a wall or trail first. The game is controlled by only two buttons to turn left or right. In Achtung, die Kurve!, players can turn and travel in any direction, not limited to the four cardinal directions.
Gameplay
editEach player spawns as a dot at a random spot on the playing field, move at a constant speed. Each player has the ability to turn left or right, although the turning speed is limited such that sharp turns are not possible. As the dot travels across the playing field, it draws a permanent, solid line in its wake, in the color of that player. When the dot collides with any section of line or the boundary of the playing field, the player instantly loses, although the line remains in the playing field until the end of the game. The game becomes increasingly difficult as more of the playing field is blocked off by lines. Other players may try to draw barriers to block the path of other players, forcing them into a collision. However, as the lines are being drawn, gaps are occasionally being generated that can be used to escape a section of the map that has been blocked off. The game is won when all but one of the players has collided.[2][3]
In its original version, up to six people can play at the same time. All the lines are exactly the same, the color being the only thing setting the different lines apart. All the keys on the keyboard must be used to play this game as it takes a lot of skill and talent.
Tournaments
editIn the summer of 2004 in Utrecht, Netherlands, the first-ever Achtung tournament was won by the Turkish Nationals. This tournament became a major success and paved the way for an even bigger tournament three years later.
In October 2007, a second tournament was held in Jakarta, Indonesia in part of the nation's gaming tournaments. In front of a crowd of around 400, Indonesia's Mighty Badgers defeated Sam's Club from Singapore in the final. The majority of the contenders were part of IASAS schools.
In December 2006, a third tournament took place at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb in Zagreb, Croatia where professors participated.
In 2012, the first Worldwide Tournament for Achtung was held[4] where paying players of the game could attend in an online tournament. Maikkon won this first online tournament. In Sweden there have been Achtung tournaments for a couple of years at a LAN party called Birdie. There are around 1,000 people at Birdie each year and 2012 the winner won a graphics card from AMD.
In January 2012, there was a "world cup" tournament in Denmark with 98 players from 13 countries. In the final there were five different countries represented: Dennis Zorko (Slovakia), Robert Feltcak (Poland), Pontus Larsson (Denmark), Anton Westman (Norway), Hampus Karlsson (Sweden) and Jimmie Klum (Sweden). The final was played in six games and Klum was the clear winner, Westman took second, and Karlsson took third. The prize was €1,000 collected from entry fees.
The winner of the 2018 world cup was Johannes "Skillhannes" Girsch, also known as "the Austrian sniper".[citation needed]
Legacy
editThe game's community created many remakes[5][6][7][8][9][10] of Achtung die Kurve to be able to port the now-unsupported game to modern platforms. For instance, the GitHub hosted Zatacka X[11] remake was ported to the OpenPandora handheld in 2016.[12] The game became a quite popular freeware download, for instance Softpedia counted 40,000 downloads of Zatacka.[13] A shareware example of a similar game concept first released in 1998 is Vipers, which optionally includes AI-controlled opponents.[14]
Game remakes include achtungkurve.com,[15] an open Source HTML5 and JavaScript version of Achtung, die Kurve!, and achtungkurve.net, an open Source remake by German duo Krito and the Stoker released in 2018.[citation needed] Additional remakes include Curve Fever, published 2011 by the Dutch authors ZaaaK, Geert van den Burg and Robin Brouns, which ceased operations and was continued by Curve Fever Pro.[16] Later remakes include Curve Crash.[17]
- ^ "Official history of Curve Fever | Hidden Monster Games". Archived from the original on 2021-01-07. Retrieved 2022-03-25.
- ^ "achtung die kurve 2". John Rush Art. Retrieved January 5, 2021.
- ^ Paumgarten, Mathias; Strauß, David. "Achtung die Kurve". STRAVID · Robuste Softwareentwicklung aus Salzburg. Retrieved January 5, 2021.
- ^ "Maikkon wins the first worldwide tournament! | Achtung, die Kurve!". Archived from the original on 2012-01-26. Retrieved 2012-01-17.
- ^ Zataka Archived 2017-05-09 at the Wayback Machine on sourceforge.net
- ^ "achtungonline.com". Archived from the original on 2017-09-14. Retrieved 2017-04-19.
- ^ achtung-die-kurve Archived 2018-06-11 at the Wayback Machine on github.com
- ^ Achtung_Wii_Kurve Archived 2009-09-18 at the Wayback Machine on wiibrew.org
- ^ psykurve Archived 2008-10-14 at the Wayback Machine on sourceforge.net
- ^ netacka Archived 2018-06-13 at the Wayback Machine on sourceforge.net
- ^ Zatacka X Archived 2017-05-05 at the Wayback Machine on github.com
- ^ zatacka x Archived 2017-04-18 at the Wayback Machine on pyra-handheld.com (2016)
- ^ Zatacka Archived 2017-11-06 at the Wayback Machine on softpedia.com
- ^ Maciej Komosinski (May 26, 1998). "Vipers game".
- ^ "simenheg/zatackax". GitHub. Retrieved February 13, 2021.
- ^ "Official history of Curve Fever". Hidden Monster Games. Archived from the original on February 7, 2018. Retrieved February 13, 2021.
- ^ "Official Website for Curve Crash". Curve Crash.