Eckhard Kruse's Pages
Atari ST
Ballerburg
April 1987: Ballerburg - two players, two castles, and a hill in between...

Download Ballerburg (for Atari ST / emulators)

Ballerburg
Background:
  • I wrote Ballerburg in April 1987 (it took me the afternoons of about one month - at that time I still went to school)
  • Later I created a somewhat extended version, providing a table for the storing the game results.
  • Written in C; size of the executable: 73410 Bytes (+ 5084 bytes music data, 13392 bytes resource data and 2235 bytes castle data)
  • I published Ballerburg as public domain (distinction between freeware, shareware etc. was not yet common), asking for a donation of 20 German Marks. In return, I offered the extended version, source code and a description how to create own castles.
  • During the years to come, I received 159 responses donating the 20 German Marks. The last donation arrived in 1999!
  • Addendum: In February 2006, a friendly 'Ballerburger' who came accross this page sent me a nice 10-Euro-Bill. Thanks, Sacha! Addendum 2012: Many thanks also to Gerald! (yes, even in the year of the 25th birthday of Ballerburg 'delayed donors' are still welcome...)
  • In 2002, a commercial software vendor releases a high-tech remake with the same title and based on the same story - unfortunately without any reference to my original Ballerburg. On the contrary, in its Web forum the vendor replies to corresponding questions that they have never heard about any Atari ST Ballerburg. The response I got personally when writing to the company was that their lawers had carefully checked that I cannot make any claims. As "compensation" I receive two free copies of the game.
Want to know more:
Ballerburg music, the ultimate cover version 2012:
  • Finally! After 25 years, the Ballerburg game over hymn has been covered. Holger Berlinghoffs version is bursting with energy and inspiration: Listen to it at Youtube!
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