
''Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space'', frequently abbreviated ''BARIS'', is a
1993
The United Nations General Assembly, General Assembly of the United Nations designated 1993 as:
* International Year for the World's Indigenous People
The year 1993 in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands had only 364 days, since its ...
space simulation strategy game for
MS-DOS
MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...
. The player takes the role of Administrator of
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...
or head of the
Soviet space program
The Soviet space program () was the state space program of the Soviet Union, active from 1951 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Contrary to its competitors (NASA in the United States, the European Space Agency in Western Euro ...
with the ultimate goal of being the first side to conduct a successful crewed
Moon landing
A Moon landing or lunar landing is the arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon, including both crewed and robotic missions. The first human-made object to touch the Moon was Luna 2 in 1959.
In 1969 Apollo 11 was the first cr ...
.
It was developed by Strategic Visions and published by
Interplay Productions
Interplay Entertainment Corp. is an American video game developer and Video game publisher, publisher based in Los Angeles. The company was founded in 1983 as Interplay Productions by developers Brian Fargo, Jay Patel, Troy Worrell, and Rebecca ...
as a computer version of ''
Liftoff!'', a 1989
board game
A board game is a type of tabletop game that involves small objects () that are placed and moved in particular ways on a specially designed patterned game board, potentially including other components, e.g. dice. The earliest known uses of the ...
developed by Fritz Bronner.
''BARIS'' was re-released in 1994 on
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains computer data storage, data computers can read, but not write or erase. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold b ...
, incorporating the earlier updates to the
floppy disk
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a ...
version, a few new updates, improved video of the mission launches,
and new multiplayer modes.
The developers worked to maintain historical accuracy, including all the actual major space hardware and several alternative proposals that were considered at the time, but did make some compromises and simplifications in the name of
game balance
Game balance is a branch of game design with the intention of improving gameplay and user experience by balancing difficulty and fairness. Game balance consists of adjusting rewards, challenges, and/or elements of a game to create the intended pl ...
and avoiding complexity.
They also consulted
Apollo 11
Apollo 11 was a spaceflight conducted from July 16 to 24, 1969, by the United States and launched by NASA. It marked the first time that humans Moon landing, landed on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and Lunar Module pilot Buzz Aldrin l ...
astronaut
An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a List of human spaceflight programs, human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member of a spa ...
Buzz Aldrin
Buzz Aldrin ( ; born Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr.; January 20, 1930) is an American former astronaut, engineer and fighter pilot. He made three extravehicular activity, spacewalks as pilot of the 1966 Gemini 12 mission, and was the Lunar Module Eag ...
, who gave permission for his name to be used for the game.
[ Bronner 1993, p. 340]
Gameplay
''Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space'' has two sides, the United States and the Soviet Union,
unlike ''Liftoff!'' which supported up to four (the other two sides in ''Liftoff!'' were Europe and Asia). Each player controls a
space center, which doubles as a navigational menu, and directs funding toward purchasing hardware,
research and development
Research and development (R&D or R+D), known in some countries as OKB, experiment and design, is the set of innovative activities undertaken by corporations or governments in developing new services or products. R&D constitutes the first stage ...
, recruiting and training
astronaut
An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a List of human spaceflight programs, human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member of a spa ...
s, and conducting launches.
While the ultimate goal of the game is to conduct a successful crewed Moon landing, it is necessary to complete several milestone achievements to ensure success.
[ Bronner 1993, pp. 201-203] Historical milestones in the game range from launching a
satellite
A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation ( GPS), broadcasting, scient ...
,
like
Sputnik 1
Sputnik 1 (, , ''Satellite 1''), sometimes referred to as simply Sputnik, was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space program ...
, to conducting a
lunar orbit
In astronomy and spaceflight, a lunar orbit (also known as a selenocentric orbit) is an orbit by an object around Earth's Moon. In general these orbits are not circular. When farthest from the Moon (at apoapsis) a spacecraft is said to be at apo ...
al mission, like
Apollo 8
Apollo 8 (December 21–27, 1968) was the first crewed spacecraft to leave Sphere of influence (astrodynamics), Earth's gravitational sphere of influence, and the first human spaceflight to reach the Moon. The crew orbited the Moon ten times ...
. Skipping a milestone results in a safety penalty to any mission depending on it.
For example, skipping a crewed lunar orbital mission would cause a safety penalty to all mission steps during a Moon landing mission.
[ Bronner 1993, pp. 265-266]
Play begins in spring of 1957 and proceeds with turns lasting six months each for up to 20 years to the end of 1977,
or until the first player successfully conducts a crewed Moon landing, or until one player is dismissed from his/her program (this happens rarely, and only to a human player who is essentially doing nothing). At the start of each turn, the game randomly chooses an "event card" to give the player, usually with a piece of historical information, and sometimes with positive or negative effects on the game.
For example, the player may be informed that
Operation Paperclip
The Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from former Nazi Germany to the US for government employment after the end of World War I ...
has increased the effect of research and development for that turn.
On the way to the Moon landing, the two space programs compete for prestige in order to secure funding. Players gain prestige points through space exploration "firsts", which include historical milestone missions that improve lunar mission safety, but also ancillary achievements, such as the first Mars flyby (historically
Mariner 4
Mariner 4 (Mariner C-3, together with Mariner 3 known as Mariner-Mars 1964) was the Mariner program, fourth in a series of spacecraft intended for planetary exploration in a flyby mode. It was designed to conduct closeup scientific observations ...
) or first
woman in space (historically
Valentina Tereshkova
Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova (born 6 March 1937) is a Russian engineer, member of the State Duma, and former Soviet cosmonaut. She was the first Women in space, woman in space, having flown a solo mission on Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963. S ...
). The player to make the second successful mission of a certain type will typically gain some prestige points, whereas subsequent missions may earn very few or no points. Prestige points are lost through mission failures, especially those involving astronaut/cosmonaut fatalities.
The heart of the game is the space missions, which come down to
dice
A die (: dice, sometimes also used as ) is a small, throwable object with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. Dice are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, ro ...
rolls. At each step of a mission, the safety factor of the relevant component is checked against a random number, adjusted by relevant astronaut skill bonuses (if the mission is crewed), safety penalties and other factors. If the check fails, an error occurs. Such an error may range from catastrophic mission failure down to no effect (e.g. "The first imprint in the lunar surface is in fact made by a helmet visor. Crewman okay."). Placing a satellite in orbit has three steps, while a Moon landing can have well over twenty. Missions are generally non-interactive; occasionally during an incident, the player may be given the option of aborting or proceeding.
History
Development
While developing ''LIFTOFF!'' with
Task Force Games
Task Force Games was a game company started in 1979 by Allen Eldridge and Stephen V. Cole. TFG published many games, most notably including both '' Star Fleet Battles'' (currently published by the original designers, Amarillo Design Bureau) an ...
, Fritz Bronner had considered making a computer version, but did not find much interest within Task Force. As Task Force had not
optioned the ''LIFTOFF!'' computer game when they were contractually able, Bronner decided to undertake the development independently. In November 1990 he met and recruited then 22-year-old Michael McCarty as programmer and formed Strategic Visions as a partnership, but concluded that publishing would be too daunting a task. They initially decided to program for
Amiga
Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...
and released a videotape demo on that platform in June 1991. However, by September they concluded that the Amiga market was shrinking and decided to change platforms to
IBM PC compatible
An IBM PC compatible is any personal computer that is hardware- and software-compatible with the IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC) and its subsequent models. Like the original IBM PC, an IBM PC–compatible computer uses an x86-based central p ...
.
In August 1991, Strategic Visions signed with Interplay Entertainment to publish the game, with a projected release of May 1992. By this time, Buzz Aldrin was on the project in an advisory role. It was also around this time that Bronner added the feature of astronaut/cosmonaut skills and morale, which previously made no impact on the performance of a mission.
Astronaut/cosmonaut skills were initially randomized at the start of each game.
Strategic Visions and Interplay showed a demo of ''Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space'' at the 1992
Consumer Electronics Show
CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typi ...
in
Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas, colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is the largest within the greater Mojave Desert, and second-l ...
, and also held a reception at
Caesars Palace
Caesars Palace is a luxury hotel and casino in Paradise, Nevada, United States. The hotel is situated on the west side of the Las Vegas Strip between Bellagio and The Mirage. It is one of Las Vegas's largest and best known landmarks.
Caesar ...
where Buzz Aldrin spoke about his experiences in the space program.
Software testing
Software testing is the act of checking whether software satisfies expectations.
Software testing can provide objective, independent information about the Quality (business), quality of software and the risk of its failure to a User (computin ...
began in September 1992, which proved a daunting task: one tester calculated that with all mission types and hardware permutations factored in, there were over 12,000 possible missions. With failure modes factored in, this number increased to approximately 50 million possible mission outcomes.
[ Bronner 1993, pp. 345-346]
In January 1993, the informative companion to the manual was the last major step delaying shipping. The book was written by Anthony Mesaros with help from NASA and was a detailed description of the Space Race with Russia and a very detailed description of the various rockets and space modules the US and Russia had created. Anthony had the book completed before the game was done but took 2.5 weeks to do the layout, design, and edit and then another 6 weeks before it came back from the printers.
Release
In March 1993, ''Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space'' was ready to be released after a production which had lasted 28 months.
The final floppy disk version had some 100
megabyte
The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Its recommended unit symbol is MB. The unit prefix ''mega'' is a multiplier of (106) in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one megabyte is one million bytes ...
s of photographs and animations cut due to space limitations, and the then-planned modem play was cut as well. Immediately upon completion of the floppy version, however, work began on the CD-ROM version.
The CD-ROM version was produced by Interplay's Rusty Buchert, who also produced ''
Descent
Descent may refer to:
As a noun Genealogy and inheritance
* Common descent, concept in evolutionary biology
* Kinship, one of the major concepts of cultural anthropology
**Pedigree chart or family tree
**Ancestry
**Lineal descendant
**Heritage
** ...
''.
''BARIS'' was re-released in 1994 on
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains computer data storage, data computers can read, but not write or erase. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold b ...
, incorporating the earlier updates to the
floppy disk
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a ...
version, a few new updates, improved video of the mission launches,
and new multiplayer modes.
''Race Into Space''
After the 2005
bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the deb ...
of publisher Interplay, the developers released the game's
source code
In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer.
Since a computer, at base, only ...
and content under a
GPL license, and the game's music as
freeware
Freeware is software, often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the free ...
. The resulting project, now called ''Race Into Space'', is hosted on
GitHub
GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...
. The game has now been
ported to modern operating systems and additional platforms (for instance
Pandora
In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first human woman created by Hephaestus on the instructions of Zeus. As Hesiod related it, each god cooperated by giving her unique gifts. Her other name—inscribed against her figure on a white-ground '' ky ...
), with some improvements over the original.
Version 2.0 of Race Into Space was released in 2025, converting the game from C to C++, fixing a host of bugs from the original version, adding many quality of life features, and fixing some historical inaccuracies.
''Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager''
In October 2014,
Slitherine Strategies released the first version of a game titled ''Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager''. The game focuses on research, development and mission planning, and shares many features with the original BARIS, but is much more detailed.
Reception
While Interplay
and others had billed the game upon its release as being appropriate for children as young as age 10, it drew criticism for being extremely difficult.
It was also criticized by ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' as being "rather lifeless". ''
Computer Gaming World
''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American Video game journalism, computer game magazine that was published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 199 ...
'' was more positive, wishing for a CD-ROM version but stating that it was a "game that should appeal to anyone with even a casual interest in space exploration".
The game received a 90/100 score from ''
PC Gamer UK'',
was a finalist for the ''
COMPUTE!
''Compute!'' (), often stylized as ''COMPUTE!'', is an American home computer magazine that was published from 1979 to 1994. Its origins can be traced to 1978 in Len Lindsay's ''PET Gazette'', one of the first magazines for the Commodore PET. ...
'' Choice Awards in 1993.
In 1994, ''
PC Gamer UK'' named ''Race Into Space'' the 26th best computer game of all time. The editors called it "the most successful piece of 'educational' software available for the PC".
It has remained popular enough with fans to spawn an open-source version from the original developers at Strategic Visions in 2005,
[ Varney 2005, p. 3] which was downloaded from
SourceForge
SourceForge is a web service founded by Geoffrey B. Jeffery, Tim Perdue, and Drew Streib in November 1999. SourceForge provides a centralized software discovery platform, including an online platform for managing and hosting open-source soft ...
between 2005 and 2017 over 90,000 times. Some of the improvements mentioned above have made the game less difficult.
Realism
While Strategic Visions worked to accurately simulate space launches and the act of running either space program, they made a number of simplifications for balancing as well as for the game to make sense.
For example, four NASA launch facilities are condensed into one superfacility. More significant is the elimination of some minor rocket programs, such as
Redstone, and the addition of
docking capability to the
Voskhod spacecraft
The Voskhod (, ''"Sunrise"'') was a spacecraft built by the Soviet Union's space program for human spaceflight as part of the Voskhod programme. It was a development of and a follow-on to the Vostok spacecraft. Voskhod 1 was used for a three-ma ...
.
There is also a "basic" model in the game which equalizes costs and safety factors between both sides.
[ Bronner 1993, p. 195] Despite this, ''BARIS'' still features most of the major pieces of hardware and approaches to Moon landing that were considered, including
lunar orbit rendezvous
Lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR) is a process for landing humans on the Moon and returning them to Earth. It was utilized for the Apollo program missions in the 1960s and 1970s. In a LOR mission, a main spacecraft and a lunar lander travel to lunar or ...
(which was the strategy used successfully in
Project Apollo
The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program led by NASA, which Moon landing, landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. Apollo followed Project Mercury that put the first Americans in sp ...
),
Earth orbit rendezvous (though in a different form) and
direct ascent
Direct ascent is a method of landing a spacecraft on the Moon or another planetary surface directly, without first assembling the vehicle in Earth orbit, or carrying a separate landing vehicle into orbit around the target body. It was proposed ...
.
References
External links
*{{moby game, id=/buzz-aldrins-race-into-space
*
''Race Into Space'' on SourceForge, a free software port of ''BARIS'' to Windows, Linux, and Mac (latest release, v.1.1)
''Race Into Space'' on GitHub continuing development of ''Race Into Space'' since latest release (includes a beta of version 2.0)
1993 video games
Business simulation games
Cultural depictions of Buzz Aldrin
Cold War video games
Commercial video games with freely available source code
DOS games
Interplay Entertainment games
Multiplayer and single-player video games
Multiplayer hotseat games
NEC PC-9801 games
Open-source video games
Play-by-email video games
Science educational video games
Video games based on real people
Video games developed in the United States
Video games set in 1957
Video games set in the Soviet Union