There was also a post-apocalypse car game (not Auto Duel) where u drove cross cuntry picking up cars and people to join your gang, had turn based combat where u drive down the highways shootingup people.  Cant think of the name but had a sequal that took place in Europe.... anyone remember the name?

Given the genre's small offerings on the Commodore 64, if it wasn't Autoduel, it's likely you were playing "Roadwar 2000" or its sequel "Roadwar Europa" instead.

also does anyone remember a game that involved a gnome who travelled through time?  you would go to the stone age then you would go to persia and then to space collecting things??

Never played it, but that definitely sounds like the premise in "Time Tunnel".

I still play C64 games from time to time on an emulator (Power64). The turn-based "Lords of Conquest" would probably appeal to a lot of MULE fans, I suspect; it's like a customizable 'deluxe' version of the boardgame Risk, and was also similarly enjoyable to play with three other players.

What was REALLY fun back then, though, were the graphics and game editing utilities. A good-sized chunk of my adolescence was spent writing stories, creating graphics and working out programming in Activision's "Gamemaker" and EA's "Adventure Construction Set". Some years back I conducted a 'salvage operation' and converted all my old five-inch Commodore floppies into emulator-readable disk images; it was totally worth it...

Yeah, I hosted a tournament game ("MULEfool") with four players tonight, played through to a "live comfortably" successful conclusion, and there's no stats or records on this site indicating the game ever took place.

Also using a Mac, BTW. The previous 1.2.2 update from this past weekend left me unable to play; related issues?

Yep. On my PowerBook G4 (running OS X 10.4.11) Planet MULE won't launch with this new update.

Java version, from Terminal:

java -version
java version "1.5.0_13"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_13-b05-241)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_13-121, mixed mode, sharing)

Error messages, from Console:

[JavaAppLauncher Error] CallStaticVoidMethod() threw an exception
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: Bad version number in .class file
   at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)
   at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:620)
   at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:124)
   at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:260)
   at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$100(URLClassLoader.java:56)
   at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:195)
   at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
   at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:188)
   at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:306)
   at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:268)
   at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:251)
   at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClassInternal(ClassLoader.java:319)
   at java.lang.Class.forName0(Native Method)
   at java.lang.Class.forName(Class.java:242)
   at apple.launcher.LaunchRunner.loadMainMethod(LaunchRunner.java:55)
   at apple.launcher.LaunchRunner.run(LaunchRunner.java:84)
   at apple.launcher.LaunchRunner.callMain(LaunchRunner.java:50)
   at apple.launcher.JavaApplicationLauncher.launch(JavaApplicationLauncher.java:52)

Yep, many, many thanks! This is truly a stunning restoration of the original game, brought gracefully into the 21st Century and onto the Internet. Honestly, if you'd told me back in 1985 that someday I'd be able to play MULE with people in Europe and Australia in real-time, I think my head would've exploded.