LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Cytron Masters
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The first real-time strategy game in history, Cytron Masters was the creation of legendary designer Dan Bunten (later Danielle Bunten Berry). In this game, the contestants face off on a futuristic battlefield. The object is to destroy the opponent's command center. The game can be played with two players, or one player competing against the computer.
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Cytron Masters is a 1982 computer game by the semi-legendary Dani Bunten Berry. It was developed by his company Ozark Softscape and released by SSI. Cytron Masters is one of the earliest computer games that can be considered a real-time strategy game, or a predecessor to the genre, requiring the players to build up their forces in order to win.
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Ahead of its time in many ways, Cytron Masters used multi-thread software routines to enable all the units to move in real-time. It ... included an interactive tutorial. Dan Bunten went on to expand his ideas from this game in his later work Modem Wars, published in 1988.
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Just after Cytron Masters was released, the aforementioned Harvard graduate expressed a desire to obtain the publishing rights to Cartels and Cutthroats for a new game company he was launching. When SSI refused to let it go, the original designer gamely offered to produce a superior knock-off.
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Trip Hawkins, founder of EA, liked Cytron Masters so much he tried to purchase the rights from SSI but they refused to sell it to him. Hawkins was disappointed but Buten assured him Ozark could cooked up an even better game. Nine month's later Ozark laid M.U.L.E. at the feet of Hawkins. incorporated Buten's original real-time auction concept he used in his original Wheeler Dealers game. was ... partially inspired by Robert A. Heinlein's Time Enough For Love.
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The theme of war makes its first appearance in 1982, with Cytron Masters for SSI's RapidFire label. This two-player design offered a curious conjunction of strategy and real-time action in a game that pushed the Apple II hardware to its limits.
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