"Star Rank Boxing" for the C-64
One of the first games I ever worked on was called "Star Rank Boxing" for the C-64. The gameplay was pretty simple: you could punch high (head) or low (body), and defensively you could push up or down on the stick to defend against head or body shots.
As we were getting ready to implement the computer AI, I read an article about some Russian scientists who were experimenting with coin flip predictions. They tested hundreds of people and discovered an "optimal" pattern of results that was the most difficult for people to predict. I decided we should use this pattern for the computer's decisions to punch to the head or body.
I'm not sure how much impact this actually had on gameplay, but I have to publicly admit that I implemented the feature so we could include this text on the box:
As we were getting ready to implement the computer AI, I read an article about some Russian scientists who were experimenting with coin flip predictions. They tested hundreds of people and discovered an "optimal" pattern of results that was the most difficult for people to predict. I decided we should use this pattern for the computer's decisions to punch to the head or body.
I'm not sure how much impact this actually had on gameplay, but I have to publicly admit that I implemented the feature so we could include this text on the box:
Advanced artificial intelligence from russia!
Players are a lot smarter now. You can't really get away with stuff like that today. ;-)
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