If you look at this—

—and see an Imperial Walker, then you, sir or madam, need to nerd up just a little bit more.

We've only got one copy of Mass Effect 2 between us, but fortunately we've found another epic (and addictive, and free) game to keep us occupied: M.U.L.E., or officially Planet M.U.L.E., a lovingly recreated adaptation of one of the most influential video games of all time. (Hat tip to Play This Thing.)

M.U.L.E. came out in 1983 on the Atari 800, and later on the Commodore 64, and it's widely considered one of the first truly successful multiplayer video game designs—the idea being that (at least on the Atari, which had four joystick ports) you could sit around the screen with your family or friends, each holding a joystick and duking it out as space settlers on the Planet Irata. (Irata... get it?)

The release is a big deal because it's been impossible to actually play M.U.L.E. since olden times, unless you wanted to use an Atari or C64 emulator (or happened to have an old machine still running, because you're a crazy an awesome person), but now you can play M.U.L.E. on Windows, a Mac, or Linux. The game is all sorts of weird fun, with many moments reminiscent of iconic games like Oregon Trail. (M.U.L.E.'s Glac elves and mountain wampuses might not have quite the universal appeal of dysentery—but they're close. Plus, you try to end every round gambling in a pub.)

• "Smithore" would be a good name for a drink.

The game is quick to learn and involves peppy, time-limited rounds in which you're staking claims on land and deciding which resources to exploit (growing food, collecting energy, mining for "smithore," or searching for "crystite"). Then you buy and sell goods in an ingenious, fast-paced bidding process in which each player's little dude literally walks to meet the other players' little dudes somewhere halfway to determine a sale price. The colony ship returns after 12 months (i.e., rounds) to end the game, and you're scored based on your planning and bargaining savvy. Another nice touch: if players get too ruthless about screwing each other over, then the entire colony suffers.

If you never played the original, this is a piece of video game history that's held up very well with age. If you have played it, you're probably already downloading it right now. The Internet has only made the multiplayer appeal of M.U.L.E. stronger, and you can join games with people playing all over the world.

(Although a warning: this being a game for the unapologetically geeky, if you want to host a game, the developers assume that you know how to set up port forwarding if you're on a NAT router. If you have no idea what that statement even means, don't worry about it: you can still play by yourself and join other games.)

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.