A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

© 2023 Hexdraw and MicroProse  As someone who cut his gaming teeth in the late 1980s and early '90s, I used to own and play many (at least eight-10 titles) games from the original iteration of MicroProse Software, which was originally a Maryland-based company that created and published computer and video games, most (but not all) of them being military-themed simulations and strategy games.  Founded by Lt. Col. William "Wild Bill" Stealey (USAF, Ret.) and legendary game designer Sid Meier, MicroProse was, for a while, anyway, one of the leading gaming software creators/publishers in the world. Its best-known titles include Sid Meier's Civilization, Silent Service and Silent Service II, Red Storm Rising, Crusade in Europe, and the F-15 Strike Eagle trilogy.  Then, after co-founder Meier left the company and the company underwent a series of ownership changes, the original Hunt Valley, MD version of MicroProse closed shop in the early 2000s, and its various intellectual...

Title screen from M1 Tank Platoon. © 1989, 2020 MicroProse/Interplay Entertainment  If you read my last post in A Certain Point of View, you know that this weekend I purchased M1 Tank Platoon, an armored warfare sim developed and published in 1989 by the original MicroProse Software and reissued by Interplay Entertainment two years ago.   This was one of my favorite games when I started playing computer games programmed for MS-DOS/Windows. Since I didn’t purchase it until 1990 – I had to “share” my copy of M1 Tank Platoon with a friend that owned an “IBM clone” – the common term for MS-DOS-based machines at the time – I can’t claim I acquired it when MicroProse first released it, but I did own/play M1 Tank Platoon during the runup to Operation Desert Storm in 1990 and for years later – in my own PC then – after the collapse of the Soviet Union. M1 Tank Platoon isn't just an M1 Abrams tank simulation; it's also a primer in armored land combat in the 1980s. © 1989, 2020 MicroP...

© 1989, 2020 MicroProse/Interplay Entertainment  As you know, this old grognard cut his wargaming teeth back in the 1980s. First, of course, with strategy games such as Avalon Hill's 1984 Gulf Strike, SSI's Conflict 1985, and MicroProse Software's Command Series trilogy ( Crusade in Europe, Decision in the Desert, and Conflict in Vietnam ). Later, when I made the transition from my first computer (an Apple IIe that I received in 1987 from my dad's brother Sixto), I started playing simulations of modern aircraft ( F-15 Strike Eagle III, Red Storm Rising, and F-117A Nighthawk: Stealth Fighter 2.0. ) One game that I played a lot between 1992 and 1995 was MicroProse's M1 Tank Platoon, a simulation of armored land warfare in the late Cold War period set in a World War III scenario pitting a U.S. Army tank platoon against Soviet-led Warsaw Pact forces invading West Germany.  Designed by Arnold Hendrick and programmed by a MicroProse team led by Scott Spanburg and Darrell ...