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Bolo is a shareware multi-player network tank battle/strategy game for the Mac, written by Stuart Cheshire. The last version released was 0.99.7.

Bolo will work on any Mac from the Mac Plus up to the latest “Luxo Jr” iMac. I have personally played it on an SE, SE/30, Duo230, IIvx, LCIII, Quadra 840AV, PowerMac 9500, PowerMac G4, with a mixture of Colour, Black & White and Grey-Scale monitors and running from System 7.1 through to Mac OS X.

I have also played it on a Windows laptop running a Macintosh Emulator called Basilik II.

The official bolo home page was located at but it doesn’t to exist any more 🙁

About Bolo

Stuart Cheshire, the original author of the Macintosh version of Bolo, describes his game as; “Bolo is a 16 player graphical networked real-time multi-player tank battle game. It has elements of arcade-style shoot-em-up action, but for the serious players who play 12 hour games with 16 players working in teams in different networked computer clusters around an office or university campus, it becomes more of a strategy game. You have to play it to understand.”

The following is an article written by Chris Russo (crusso@alink.net) that was posted to the Internet newsgroup rec.games.bolo in 1994 but it is still pretty valid.

For those of you who haven’t given Bolo a good try yet, you’re REALLY missing out. IMOSHO I’d have to say that Bolo is my all-time favorite Macintosh game, and a great many other people out there would agree with me. Is there another Mac-only game that has its own rec.* group? Maybe, I don’t know of any, though.

Have you played around with Bolo once or twice and not been impressed. That’s understandable because it doesn’t have flashy graphics or dazzling sounds. More than anything, the interface is functional, so it might be hard to appreciate the genius of the game without playing it more.

Another factor contributing with some people’s not being impressed with Bolo on a first outing is the fact that Bolo is a multiplayer game. If you downloaded Bolo for yourself then ran it, and said, “Damn, not much to do here,” you probably weren’t playing against any other human opponents.

Although there are some ‘Bots’ that are available which can be fun to practice against, even the author states that Bolo’s focus is that of a multiplayer game.

So, if you haven’t played it at all, or you’re wondering why it has such a cult following, I’ll give a little outline of the basics.

The object of Bolo is simple. Pummel your opponent(s) into submission. You achieve this objective by using your tank and the available resources to deprive your opponent of obtaining any resources of his/her own. The resources available to you are several: Refueling bases give you ammo, shields, and mines for shooting, protecting and booby-trapping respectively. Pillboxes are armored gun turrets that can be captured and then deployed in the captors defense. Trees can be farmed to build roads, build structures, repair pillboxes, and build boats for your tank to travel upon.

Sounds simple, right? Well it is, to begin with. As you play, however, you’ll come to realize that there’s a ton of complexity underlying that simple object.

If you’re interested, visit . While you’re there, also grab the FAQ and maybe a couple of extra world maps.

Get together with a couple of friends on a local network and give the game a few hours of your time. Learn how to capture the pillboxes and set them up to defend those fuel bases while preventing your opponents from doing the same.

After you’ve gotten a little experience, and you’re kicking butt on all of your friends, join a game with others on the internet. They’ll be happy to disabuse you of your superior attitude. 🙂 Oh yeah, read the FAQ before joining an internet game. It has a lot of info on strategy that you’ll find useful as well as some notes on bolo-etiqutte that other players will really appreciate your knowing.

rec.games.bolo is the main discussion area for Bolo topics, and if you know how to use irc, jump over to the #bolo area. It’s a great place to find a game, discuss strategy, or just hang out.

Remember, if you start playing and really like it. Do the right thing and give Stuart Cheshire his shareware fee.

Happy boloing!

Chris (Bolo handle ‘C++’)

Stuart Cheshire, the original author of the Macintosh version of Bolo, describes his game as; “Bolo is a 16 player graphical networked real-time multi-player tank battle game. It has elements of arcade-style shoot-em-up action, but for the serious players who play 12 hour games with 16 players working in teams in different networked computer clusters around an office or university campus, it becomes more of a strategy game. You have to play it to understand.”

For those of you who haven’t given Bolo a good try yet, you’re REALLY missing out!

Bolo for Mac OS X

A group called Genga Software commenced development of a Mac OS X version of Bolo called XBolo, but they seem to have since disappeared. An archive of XBolo was able to be found at the XBolo.net site. The two files archived there were provided to Xbolo.net from a guy who found them in a deep dark corner of the Internet. Ben has given them a quick test and he says they appear to be OK. The 0.2.0 version is the stable, recommended version, while the 0.3.0-dev version is clearly a development release and is not really playable, but has some promising new features.

If you are running Mac OS X and love playing Bolo, then you may be interested in reading an article I wrote on XBolo.

Interested in Playing Bolo?

Grab a copy of Bolo and run through the practice session a couple of times (You’ll be lucky having this – I had to learn without this as I started playing Bolo before Stuart included this section and it has a lot valuable tips I hadn’t known before)

Then if you are lucky enough to have two macs networked at home (or work if the boss will allow it. To the Bosses out be warned – It’s addictive. To employees: Get the Boss addicted) try playing a network game against a human player or a Brain.

For starters, the Standard Autopilot is fine to play against, but I personally play against Ladmo for a bit more challenge.

Word of advice, if playing against a Brain, give it the most powerful machine and you take the other – it’s more fun that way and more like playing against a human. Also increase the memory allocation to Bolo to the maximum allowed on your system and ensure that you aren’t running anything else in the background.

New Bolo Archive

UPDATE June 3, 2017: Whilst looking for something else, I stumbled across a Bolo archive over at the Internet Archive that includes a Browser-based Emulator that allows you to play with in your favourite web browser. There is also a 52mb Disk Image that contains the Bolo application and over 4,000 custom maps (alas none of mine seem to be included, but to can download them below) and other assorted files.

Bolo Maps by Nicholas Pyers

Over the years, I have designed various maps for use with Bolo. Some are quite simple and designed for two players, while others have far greater complexity and are intended for more players.

Bolo Maps from NKP
These maps where originally released to the public through the AUSOM Macintosh Disk Library in Feburary 1996 and I believe to a couple of Bolo FTP sites, but alas I can no longer find a copy. If any one has a original set of these maps, please let me know.

The original description read “These maps were designed to be played with two players – myself and a friend, but some will easily support more players. You will be able to see my progression in map design and playability. I have also experimented with a variety of terrians and layouts. Some have multiple islands, others just have a single island with difficult terrian.”

More Bolo Maps from NKP
A collection of 18 bolo maps released in January 1999. Beware of exploding pillboxs in some of these maps.

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Even More Bolo Maps from NKP
A collection of 10 bolo maps released Feburary 2001.

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Bolo Maps NKP Vol IV
The fourth collection of Bolo Maps from Nicholas which was released in May 2001, again with 10 new maps. This collection was designed with a large number of players in mind.

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