Smiley Royal Rumble & Smiley Racer True by Henry Truong (1999)

carbontwelve · Post by **carbontwelve** » Fri Feb 03, 2023 5:05 am

Hi everyone. I have been looking for this game for the past few years and recently had a bit of of a breakthrough thanks to someone on Mastodon being able to find a screenshot.

I downloaded Smiley Racer True and Smiley Royal Rumble from dosgames.com in 1999 both games where listed in the Miscellaneous section and the page was archived by the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/19991111165 ... _misc.html

The screenshot for Smiley Racer resulted in a 404, but there is a screenshot for Smiley Royal Rumble:

: Smiley Royal Rumble; Pasted image 20230203002221.png (24.44 KiB) Viewed 1570 times

Smiley Racer True was described as:

This racing game is more of a simple simulation than an actual racing game. Basically you select your racers and watch as they race around the track. There are several options you can set. The game features simple ANSI graphic characters (hence "Smiley") and no sound ... but it might be fun as a party game where you bet on who's going to win!

Smiley Royal Rumble was described as:

This pseudo-simulation "game" is quite similar to Smiley Racer True above. It features fewer customization options, but it seems more interesting to watch smileys duke it out instead of racing around a track.

Unfortunately the wayback machine hasn't archived the download source http://www.redrival.com/mallo and that hosting provider is no longer in business.

I know the zip files for both where called SmileyRacerTrue.zip and SmileyRoyalRumble.zip but beyond that I am at a loss.

Does anyone remember these? Where do you recommend I look next?

Rwolf · Post by **Rwolf** » Fri Feb 03, 2023 11:30 am

I found an archived screenshot of the other game:

carbontwelve · Post by **carbontwelve** » Mon Feb 06, 2023 6:36 am

Rwolf wrote: ↑I found an archived screenshot of the other game:

Thank you, I had been looking for that screenshot as well but thought it was as lost as the zip archives. At least now with the screenshots I could write them again.

Interesting; looking at the IA history for that file it says it picked up a copy in 2006... https://web.archive.org/web/20060215000 ... srtrue.gif that must mean the image was linked to from the website at that time. I was under the belief that the games had been removed in 2000 for some reason.

Rwolf · Post by **Rwolf** » Mon Feb 06, 2023 8:06 am

I don't think the actual games were hosted on DOSgames site at the time, but only linked to the developers own site, which is not archived.

I searched for the authors name, and it seems to be quite a common name. The games original hosting pathname included 'mallo' and there is a similarity to an alias name 'MarshMallo' for a musician, but I've been unable to find any proof of this person being a game programmer, if one can call this a game - it is more of an experiment in AI/idle game programming, maybe part of a programming class excercise?