TASO 131

TASO 131 is a multiplayer action game from the 1990s. Players use helicopters, cruise missiles, ground troops and paratroopers to destroy opponents’ bases while defending their own. In the campaign mode, players also design their own bases in a manner similar to real-time strategy games, constructing buildings from barracks to air defence systems.

During the 1990s, there was a whole scene of young guys in Finland making and playing small action-oriented PC games like this, known as suomipelit (“finngames”). The games were distributed via disk swapping and through bulletin board systems (BBS), and eventually also through the Internet (see TASO’s entry in Suomipelit.fi). Many of the most popular finngames, like AUTS and Wings, were split-screen multiplayer flying games inspired by a Finnish Amiga game called Turboraketti. TASO combined split-screen flying with elements from the first real-time strategy game I ever saw, Dune 2. The result was fairly successful. In 1997, TASO was awarded the first prize in a national game development competition co-organized by Housemarque.

TASO 131 supports up to four players, which can be AI players or human players playing on a single computer using split-screen graphics. Fitting eight hands on a single keyboard is an interesting metagame in its own right.