Taipan! A game based on the China trade of the 1800’s.

Taipan was a home computer game from the early ’80s that was fun and addicting despite its lack of graphics. It invented the trading-game genre. Taipan was inspired by James Clavell’s novel “Tai-Pan“.

The original version of the game was created by Art Canfil and the Apple II version was coded by Ronald J. Berg of Mega-Micro Computers. This Android version is modeled after the popular Apple II version.

The infamous bug in the original game remains in this version.

Download from Google Play for FREE!  Amazon is paid version but is Ad-Free!

Differences between original and our version

There are some minor differences, we list them below for those who are interested:

• In our version, player can back out of game and resume play later with current game.

– In original there was no “Save Game” feature.

• Due to our version’s “Quit trading” menu, user can’t pick the current city they are in to travel to (it’s grayed out).

– In original game, trying to travel to the current city would give an error message.

• Also for the same reason (our “Quit trading” menu), player can back out of if they choose not to Quit Trading.

– Original game would force user to pick a city.

• In our version, the time interval between payments to Li Yuen will be at least 2 days.

– Original game could have as short as 1 day.

• In battle, player is allowed to “Throw All Cargo”, even if some cargo types have zero.

– In original game “Throw All Cargo (*)”,  if ANY cargo is empty, it would error.

There was no “Options” menu or “Speed Increase” feature.

The text and images are green because we modeled it after a monochrome monitor which was popular at the time.