PimpWars

Saving a failing restaurant may sound like a peculiar premise for a game, but
any skepticism is forgotten at this diversion’s base recipe for its salvation:
to raise enough capital ($5 million) to purchase Flaming Sheinen’s grill
outright, you must take to the streets and delegate the revenue-generation to
a small army of ladies of the night, who you will manage toward optimal
profitability. While it’s a strange formula it’s also a straightforward one
(as the game reminds upon startup, `Note: Daily Profit = Cash + (Rate * Hours
of all Whores)` — and it can’t be denied that this game’s lurid approach to
supply-side economics is more titillating than your run-of-the-mill industry
simulator.

Starting at the nowheresville intersection of 1st & Main, you slowly build
your empire, day by day, as you earn enough money to move uptown street by
street, where your whores — if suitably attired — can increase their hourly
rates by leaps and bounds (for after all, as the old chestnut has it, while
lower-class whores get crabs, upper-class whores get nothing but lobster.)
While your player doesn’t make money the same way as his stable does, you
still have the options of attempting to fatten your chequebook by trips to the
casino or, for the bold, outright theft from other players.

Indeed, left to your own devices, winning this game would only be a matter of
time — but the presence of competitors in this game’s dial-up BBS door game
context means that you not only have to perform well but outperform your
peers, or risk having the restaurant sold out from under you. This leads to a
number of underhanded and despicable tactics — you can burn down competing
brothels, or hire an agent to impregnate or infect an opponent’s working girls
with venereal diseases… if you can’t just persuade them to work for you
instead, with a fancier wardrobe on a more prestigious corner. (Just make sure
you dole them out enough condoms to remain part of your active workforce!)

The interface is a series of single-keystroke options selected from various
textmode menus, with every action undertaken adding minutes to the clock. Once
you hit late night, all you can do is sit back and wait for your employees to
earn their commission. The following day, you get to find out what all your
careful arrangements (and more to the point, what the other players’ careful
arrangements against you ) amounted to.

PimpWars