Memories of Mayhem

One of the things I definitely remember about Operation Mayhem was Dope Wars.

In 1999, I was rocking a Palm III PDA (I think it was a version 3, stay with me here...). One of the games I had "downloaded" was a little something called Dope Wars. Dope Wars was text and turn based game in which you played a drug dealer buying and selling drugs in different areas of New York City. You could purchase weapons to defend yourself and often had to flee from the police. The object of the game was to have the most money possible after a certain amount of turns or by the time the police finally caught up to you and arrested you or shot you dead.

The key to the game was knowing the value of certain drugs and when they were "on sale" so that you could buy low and sell high in another area of town.

The game became quite addicting (no pun intended) and we played it quite a bit on the trip. It also led to some funny conversations where we would say things to each other like, "I just bought 45 units of hash in Brooklyn which I'm going to sell for a killing in the Boogie Down!"

Ahhh, memories. That game made us all virtual multi-millionaires.