SERRA PELADA: THE MIDAS TOUCH – (MSX PORT WITH AUDIO)

Striking Gold: Play the 1986 Retro Classic “Serra Pelada” with Friends!

Greetings from OGF Travel! While we usually focus on exploring the beautiful destinations of the real world, today we are taking a trip back in time, to the Brazilian gold rush of the 1980s and the golden era of 8-bit microcomputers.

I’ve put together a special easter egg for everyone visiting the site: a fully playable, web-based port of Serra Pelada: The Midas Touch.

A Piece of Computing History

Originally published in 1986 across issues 34 and 35 of the Brazilian computing magazine INPUT, Serra Pelada was a “type-in” game. Back in the day, if you wanted to play a game, you had to type hundreds of lines of BASIC code into your computer by hand!

To save you the trouble of finding a vintage MSX computer, OGF Tech has completely ported the original Portuguese “spaghetti code” into modern HTML and JavaScript, translated it to English, and added retro 8-bit sound effects. It was built just for fun in April 2026, and published right here by OGF Travel.

How to Play

You are the owner of a mining enterprise during the infamous Serra Pelada gold rush. Your goal is to amass as much wealth as possible over the course of 30 rounds. You can play solo or compete side-by-side with a friend.

You will start with a massive balance of $2,000,000, but mining is an expensive business. Every turn, you must make strategic decisions:

• Research and Development: Invest cash to permanently lower your future excavation costs.
• Geological Surveys: Pay a fee (up to $150,000) for a report that tells you the probability of finding gold, the expected depth, and the potential yield.
• Digging: Sink your shafts 200 meters at a time. If you dig too deep past the surveyed depth and find nothing, your mine is a bust and you must move on.
• Selling on the Market: The price of gold fluctuates wildly. Keep an eye on the market and sell your gold at the Federal Savings Bank when prices are high.

⚠️ A Word of Warning: Don’t get too greedy! If you hoard too much gold instead of selling it, you might become the target of local thieves who will steal your hard-earned nuggets. And if your total balance drops below zero, your company will go bankrupt and your game is over.

Grab a friend, scroll down to the terminal below, press Enter, and see who can become the ultimate gold baron of Serra Pelada!