Pyro 2 (1990): Michael O'Brien's ASCII Game About Outrunning Your Own Fuse

Year: 1990 · Developer/Publisher: Michael O’Brien (freeware) · Platform: DOS · Theme: Shareware

Some games earn their following through polish. Pyro 2 earns it through a single, well-executed idea: you’re a pyromaniac, you’ve tied a long burning fuse to yourself, and every second you spend indoors is a second closer to the fire catching up. The building is full of gas cans you’ve pre-planted, and the whole point is to trigger as many of them as possible on the way to the exit without the flame trailing behind you, or the explosions you’ve caused, taking you down first.

It sounds almost too simple to sustain a full game, and yet it doesn’t play that way. As you move, the burning string ignites pools of gasoline from any tanks you’ve already tipped over, which means a level can turn hostile in ways you triggered yourself several rooms earlier. Brushing a flaming wall, getting caught by your own trailing fire, or standing too close when a gas tank finally goes up are all equally lethal. There’s a built-in mercy mechanic, though: the more fires you’ve already caused on a given floor, the slower your own fuse burns, which rewards aggressive play over cautious creeping.

The campaign structure adds a layer of dark comedy on top of the mechanics. You start in the IRS building, of all places, then progress through the White House, Buckingham Palace, and eventually the Kremlin, running into historical figures along the way. None of this is played entirely straight; the tone throughout leans into absurdity rather than menace. Master players unlock secret missions once they’ve proven themselves on the standard campaign.

It’s an ASCII game, rendered in text characters rather than sprites or bitmap art, which was a practical choice for a small freeware title working within the memory constraints common to shareware releases of the period. That presentation choice hasn’t aged the way graphical games from the same year have; ASCII games either work as a deliberate style or they don’t, and Pyro 2’s fast, readable layout falls into the former camp. PC speaker sound effects round out the presentation, doing more with the hardware’s limits than most games bothered to attempt.

Whether Michael O’Brien built anything else that reached a similar audience isn’t something the surviving record settles, and that’s fine to leave open rather than pad out with speculation.

What’s easier to say with confidence is why the format still works decades later. Text-mode games from this period had to communicate danger through timing and spatial layout rather than visual spectacle, and Pyro 2’s fuse mechanic is a clean example of that constraint turned into an actual design strength. You always know exactly how close the fire is, because the game never hides that information behind an effect or an animation. The tension comes entirely from what you choose to do with information you already have.

How to run it today

Pyro 2’s DOS build runs without complications inside DOSBox on any current system. Because it’s ASCII-rendered rather than graphics-heavy, there’s essentially no hardware compatibility risk once DOSBox is configured, which makes this one of the easier games on this list to get running correctly on the first try.

Compatibility: DOS (via DOSBox) · Controls: Keyboard only · Setup difficulty: Low

Legal status

Pyro 2 was released as freeware in 1990, and there’s no confirmed current rights holder actively managing or distributing it through any storefront today. That’s a common outcome for small freeware titles from independent authors of that era, not evidence of anything unusual having happened to it.

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Reviewers at the time pointed toward Pyrotechnica and Quarantine as games with a similar restless, destructive energy, even if neither shares Pyro 2’s exact mechanics. Blue Ice, from the same “small, weird, and freeware-adjacent” pocket of early-90s PC gaming, is worth a look for a related sense of DIY invention.