Fire Fighter (1985 video game)

Title screen.

Fire Fighter is a turn-based puzzle game based on controlling forest fires developed and published by Eben Sprinsock for MS-DOS in 1985. In the game, you are a fire fighter trying to stop a forest fire from wiping out a forest filled with houses. You can air-drop water, build fire breaks, and start backfires in order to prevent the blaze. Points are awarded for how much of the forest you're able to save once the fire finally dies out. The game was compiled with a Borland compiler, probably Pascal.

Personal

Fire Fighter was included as shovelware in the Keypunch Software title, Convoy, which is where I first saw it. As was typical with Keypunch, they removed all the developer's credits and re-titled it to Fire Out. I wasn't really interested in this game when I first saw it, and couldn't really figure out what was going on. However, after I actually read through the rules and played it a couple times, I figured it out, but quickly lost interest.

Status

The game is distributed as freeware, but with a request for $10.

Review

2	4	1	1	2

Best Version: DOS

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• I like that the developer included multiple strategic options to the game. You aren't just doing water drops, but you can also make fire breaks and start backfires.

Bad

• The game is very lacking in multimedia with only the most primitive color and sound.
• There are very few units in the game, just forest, fire, house, water, and firebreak. This would be enough for a board game, but, since it's a computer game, there is a lot more that could have been done with it.

Ugly

• The game is pretty dull. You can "beat" it simply by letting the fire rage out of control. Run it several times over and over again, and you'll eventually get a high score simply by sheer luck.

Media

Screenshots

• 

  Original title screen.

Releases

Released	Platform	Language	Author	Notes
1985-??-??	MS-DOS	Pascal?	Eben Sprinsock	Distribution method unknown. Probably BBS.
1987-07-15	MS-DOS	Pascal?	Eben Sprinsoc	Fire Out published by Keypunch Software in Convoy. Hacked to remove author's name.

Download

This collection includes the original build and the Keypunch version.

• Download (Info) - All versions.

Links