El-Fish

[Rich Nagel]

"El-Fish"... anyone own/still play this old DOS gem ( http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?gameid=363 )? Hehe, not quite as off-topic as one might think for a Tetris-related message forum <G>.


Direct from the El-Fish FAQ -> http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin ... 77125.html (http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/game/577125.html)


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The EF concept was born in the head of Alexej Pajitnov and Vladimir Polhilko. Pajitnov is world-wide known by one of its first creations, Tetris. It's also one of my favorite games ever! Pajitnov also made many other great mental puzzles. Pokhilko was a research psychologist who ended as computer programmer.


In 1989, when Polhilko met Pajitnov (or viceversa) they founded in Moscow a company caled Intec, devoted to games sustained with scientists theories such as genetic evolution and enviromental behaviour. Henk Rogers, founder of Bullet-Proof Software (this time in Redmond), made a joint venture between Intec and Bullet-Proof Software and AnimaTek was born.


With Rogers as a entrepeneur, AnimaTek was able to grow up its staff, and the first works were done. Do you know that first they started working with flowers? Then, they chose butterflies. It would have been also cool to view El-Flower, or El-Butterfly. But finally they finished developing the program to work with fishes.

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I remember buying the game when it first hit the store shelves back in (what?) '94, and (at the time) thinking it was about the coolest thing that I had seen on the PC -:)

[Needle]

I didn't know El-Fish was related to Pazhitnov/Polhilko. I remember seeing the box at a store long long ago, then later seeing Aquazone and thinking it was a El-Fish knockoff. Ironic that the latter got the lasting success, and Polhilko had to meet such a sad ending.

[Rich Nagel]

I remember seeing the box at a store long long ago, then later seeing Aquazone and thinking it was a El-Fish knockoff. Ironic that the latter got the lasting success


Prolly due to their relative ages. El-Fish was released eons ago for DOS (and can be a real bi$% to run under anything but pure DOS), while Aquazone (AFAIK) is a native 32-bit Windows app (making it easier to run on more modern PCs/OSs).


BTW, (altough I've been playing El-Fish since the day it hit the store shelves, and have browsed over the afore-mentioned FAQ on numerous occasions throughout the years), one thing that I never realized before was that AnimaTek came about from Henk Rogers and BPS.


P.S. Check this pic -> http://www.9003inc.com/elfish/images/ab ... bout03.gif (http://www.9003inc.com/elfish/images/about_pc/pc_about03.gif) from this web page -> http://www.9003inc.com/elfish/html/elfish_team_a.htm -:)

[tepples]

El-Fish was released eons ago for DOS (and can be a real bi$% to run under anything but pure DOS)

Is it old enough to run at full speed in emulation (http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1) on a modern PC?

[Rich Nagel]

Is it old enough to run at full speed in emulation (http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1) on a modern PC?


DOSBox would prolly run it just fine. All of my PCs are too slow to run DOSBox though, but I can usually get it running with a DOS bootup.