"It is my birthday so I am issuing a blog challenge to write about an obscure game on your blog. People are legally allowed to issue blog challenges on their birthday."
Michael Klamerus, via Bluesky, explains his challenge on his blog, The Virtual Moose: write about an obscure game. If someone says "that's not obscure!", they get punched in the face. Okay. Sounds good to me! (Also happy birthday, Michael, from all one of us at Blaugh!.)
The obscure game I would like to write about today is... Gazillionaire, initially released sometime in 1994 or 1995 by LavaMind Productions, and still sold today on Steam.
Trade and market simulators are nearly as old as computer gaming itself, what with progenitors like The Sumerian Game, Taipan!, and the million ports and recreations of Drug Wars. Gazillionaire, then, is a member of a long tradition in computer gaming. Here, though, you are not peddling dope in back alleys or managing farmsteads before the time of Christ. In Gazillionaire, you manage an interplanetary trading company, operating out of a single ship. Your most basic form of commerce is buying and selling commodity items - from whipped cream and diapers, to Oggle sand and Babel seeds, in 1-ton increments - between a selection of 7 alien planets. "Buy low, sell high" forms the basis of gameplay, as handled by a very simple, almost Visual Basic-esque menu system. On top of simply trading goods, you may also carry passengers in your ship (with ticket prices set one turn in advance), buy and sell shares on the stock market, advertise your impending arrival to your next planet, and build interest by putting money in the bank. While you're on planet, you may also visit the "planet special," where you can inquire about services unique to each planet: television coverage, ship upgrades, the Traders' Union, or even alien soothsayers.
The whole "alien" thing is, in fact, Gazillionaire's primary distinction. With as many other business sims as there are in the world, LavaMind had to do something to make their game as special as possible, and it turns out that this "something" was a vast amount of artwork of bizarrely shaped intergalactic creatures, and a whole CD-ROM full of inexplicable mouth noises. Almost nobody in Gazillionaire resembles a human being, outside of your crew, represented by a bulky man in a Hawaiian shirt, perpetually depicted with a threatening fist, even while he clicks his heels in joy that you've remembered to pay them this week. The initial purchase of your ship of choice (from a selection of twelve, each with its own unique theme song) is financed by a loan of 100,000 Kubars by one Mr. Zinn, a weirdly curvy man with mahogany-esque skin and an oversized head. Remember to pay back Mr. Zinn's loan, and he emits a distinctive "WEHHHH!" noise as his portrait briefly flashes a toothy grin at you.
You are not alone in the star system of Kukubia, as regardless of how many human players are in the game, there are six computer-controlled opponents competing for the commodity market. Each is characterized by their own behaviors (from the puttering and easily distracted Gizzy Shipping, to the ruthless Hoff Miester), their own portrait, and again their own unique theme song. Even beyond the threat of other companies buying up all the goods before you can get there, there are random encounters in this game. Lost dogs, impresarios, unforeseen space weather, even actual criminals; sometimes you will be given the chance to put your resources to something besides trading. Whether it works in your favor, or the RNG decides to screw you over for even trying, sometimes the gamble is what puts you on top of the charts, and sometimes it ends with your ship being hijacked by pirates who kill half your crew and redirect your ship to the wrong planet.
Gazillionaire doesn't believe in background music; every company, starship, planet, facility, and player action comes with its own distinct audio cue, whether it be a ten-second snippet of music, a sound effect clearly downloaded from a BBS in 1993, or some programmer making Donald Duck noises into a Sound Blaster microphone. This, on top of the artwork being a diverse selection of wildly varied art styles, from POV-Ray renders, to 32x32 Windows icons, to what I can only describe as "ascended MS Paint," gives Gazillionaire - even in its slightly enhanced Steam incarnation - what I can only describe as top-tier shareware aesthetic. This was not a game developed with an Art Budget; this was a game developed By Any Means Necessary.
Certainly, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other games that simulate the kind of fast paced trading that Gazillionaire does. But only Gazillionaire cobbles it together in quite this fashion. Almost none of it really meshes, but that is precisely the reason I love it so much. Decisions went into the way this game looks and sounds, nearly all of which have been fully retained even in the current edition. It is affordable, it is intuitive, and I'll never not laugh at the whipped cream farts.