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I'm trying to identify a game I remember from the 1980s. The game was shown from a bird's-eye viewpoint (or maybe isometric?), on Apple IIe, IIRC.

You controlled a guy with an axe, who was constantly walking forward, but you could rotate him left or right. So was the other player. You had an axe in one hand, and each time you swung the axe through the other player, you damaged him - this was shown as darker area (and would eventually kill him, winning the match). If you got to one side of the screen it, would scroll (as only part of the playing area was shown at any time on the screen).

There were also (one or more?) flying discs, and if you stepped on one, you would fly forward at much higher speed (which could work for you, or against you, depending how good you were).

I think you could choose whether you wanted to play against another player or against the computer.

(Some of the details of my memory might be smudged by time, of course.)

Does anybody remember the name of this game?

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  • Anything about the story? otherwise it might get realy hard.
    – Raffzahn
    Sep 17, 2018 at 1:16
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    @Raffzahn no, unfortunately I don't remember the story or much else. I think when guy was damaged there was a blood dripping as he moved (the more damaged he was, the more blood), but that could be my imagination. I'm hoping someone might remember the gameplay and thus remember the game
    – Matija Nalis
    Sep 17, 2018 at 1:36

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The Bilestoad. Axes, flying discs, and blood - kind of narrows it down. ; - )

But here's a screenshot with axes, a flying disc, and blood.

Screen capture of Apple II game "The Bilestoad"

Here's a clean crack (playable in-browser), a video of the game and an interview with the author. This was a controversial game at the time, and possibly influential. John Romero is apparently a fan.

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  • One of my favourite early Apple games. Spent so long trying to work out the controls at maybe 5 frames per second (from memory, when you actually clashed with your opponent). Thanks for the link to the interview, which is probably 25 years old itself! edit: ok I just watched the video and 5 fps was overstating it!
    – codah
    Sep 20, 2018 at 6:10
  • I remember seeing photos in magazines, but I never got to play it!
    – Thomas
    Sep 25, 2018 at 22:59
  • @Thomas: I've added a link to an image that's downloadable or playable in-browser.
    – Nick Westgate
    Sep 25, 2018 at 23:11
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Interesting side note on the Bilestoad... the source code was recently discovered and posted to the web. Ebay Seller has no idea what the discs were and but dug them out of a dumpster where the estate heirs had tossed them. Also in the discs were source files for some other Data Most games like Aztec and Swashbuckler. Twitter link here here.https://twitter.com/Apple2Games/status/1043340704544645123?s=19

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    The Bilestoad sources are in LISAv2 assembler format. The Swashbuckler sources are in S-C assembler format. Happily, CiderPress can parse all of these.
    – fadden
    Sep 25, 2018 at 23:30

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