A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

  © 2024 Triassic Games/MicroProse As someone who came of age during the latter half of the Cold War, I’ve always been captivated by the scenarios in which tensions between NATO and the Warsaw Pact could have escalated into full-scale war. It’s not that I wished for a Third World War to erupt in the late 1970s and early 1980s during my brief flirtation with conservatism. True, I disliked the Soviet Union then as much as I dislike Vladimir Putin’s Russian Federation now. However, I desperately wanted sanity and diplomacy to prevail during those tense times. At the same time, I hoped that if a war between East and West did break out, our military forces—especially the U.S. and Royal Navies—would triumph in a Third Battle of the Atlantic. © 1988 MicroProse & Jack Ryan Enterprises, Ltd.  It should therefore come as no surprise that many of the books, movies, and computer games I enjoy, even in my more liberal incarnation, center on actual Cold War incidents such as the Cuban M...

 From the lead designer of Cold Waters, Sea Power lets you control NATO and Warsaw Pact forces in modern naval conflict campaigns. Use your advanced naval weaponry and sensors to respect rules of engagement and defeat the enemy forces in a tense fight for initiative and air/naval supremacy. – Promotional blurb on Steam, MicroProse/Triassic Games Well, it's been nearly a week since MicroProse released Triassic Games' Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age, and I'm impressed by how much attention to detail the game's developers lavished on this sim.  If I had to describe the game succinctly, I'd say it's a more muscular and visually appealing version of both Harpoon Classic '97 and Fleet Command, with a bit of Cold Waters added for good measure,  (That latter bit is not a casual observation because, as MicroProse's promo blurb states, the lead designer of Killerfish Games' 2017 submarine sim created Sea Power along with others in his new studio, T...

Hi, everyone! It's been quite some time (a long while, indeed) since I last delved into the world of computer games and gaming here. The last game I highlighted was Regiments , a thrilling Cold War-turns-hot simulation that plunges you into the heart of land warfare in an alternate 1989, where NATO must fend off a fierce Warsaw Pact invasion of West Germany. Developed by the innovative Bird's Eye Games and brought to life by the legendary MicroProse, Regiments quickly became a favorite of mine in the military gaming genre. Fast forward to today, and I'm excited to share my latest gaming obsession — Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age . This game marks my first new purchase since returning to the vibrant city of Miami after an eight-year hiatus. Like Regiments, Sea Power is set in the tense Cold War era but shifts the battlefield to the vast, unpredictable oceans. Developed by the talented team at Triassic Games and published by MicroProse, Sea Power promise...

The "main title" page from Second Front . © 2023 Hexdraw and MicroProse  Hi, there, Dear Reader. Well, this is just a quick update about my progress with Second Front, a new turn-based tactical level game set during the Second World War created by Hexdraw and published on January 31 by MicroProse. Dislodging this German squad proved impossible the first time I played the Advance tutorial. © 2023 Hexdraw and MicroProse I’ve only played Second Front for - according to my statistics on Steam – 6.4 hours since I bought it last week when it dropped. Most of that time has been spent on exploring the various tutorials for Infantry units and Armored units; I tried one “real” battle to see if I could get by without “basic training,” but I found out – the hard way – that I’m not ready to lead anyone into combat. I had a tough time with the first Infantry tutorial, but I eventually figured out how to advance properly without getting my squad killed on the first turn. I also learned ...

© 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...

Sometimes it's interesting to play a wargame from the "enemy" side's perspective. Graphics and game design elements from Regiments are ©2022 Bird's Eye Games and MicroProse  One of the hardest things for me to do as a gamer is to take on the role of an “adversary power” in computer games. Whether the game is single-player (my preferred mode) or multiplayer, and no matter if the setting is historic – such as in Game Labs’ Ultimate General Civil War , MicroProse’s Crusade in Europe, or Killerfish Games’ War on the Sea – or fictional – as in MicroProse’s Regiments or LucasArts’ Star Wars: Rebellion – I tend to avoid playing as the faction generally accepted to be the “bad guys.” In many of the games I own, including the single-player Regiments and Killerfish Games submarine simulation Cold Waters, I can – if I so desire – take on the role of an “enemy” power’s commander. In Cold Waters, for instance, the game allows you to command submarines from the U.S., Sovie...

Although I commanded a U.S. brigade in the Skirmish from which I snapped this screenshot, Regiments now features British regiments that were based in West Germany in 1989. Here, a British light tank, supported by infantry (lower left) fires at an advancing Warsaw Pact platoon (top center). All graphic and game design elements in this and other screenshots are © 2022 Bird's Eye Games and MicroProse.)   As you know, I’ve been playing Regiments (2022, Bird’s Eye Games/MicroProse) since its release last August; it’s the first title I buy on Steam from the revived MicroProse, and I had been waiting for it since it was announced a few years ago. The revamped main menu page in Regiments.  So far, I’ve played through all the tutorials, the three Skirmish modes ( Attack, Meeting Engagement, and Mobile Defense ), and I even started the grand campaign ( Operations ). I got stuck on the West German Operation and I am not sure if I want to restart the campaign or just wait till I ge...

( Warsaw Pact troops run into heavy fire from NATO defenders in the Runway scenario.© 2022 Bird's Eye Games & MicroProse  On December 25, 2022, East European game studio Bird's Eye Games rolled out the first DLC expansion to Regiments, the Cold War-gone-hot real-time strategy (RTS) game it created for MicroProse, four months after the core game's long-awaited release in August.  The DLC, which will be the only free expansion offered by its developers, added British units and equipment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces in this reimagined version of a 1989 in which perestroika and glasnost failed and the Warsaw Pact, led by the Soviet Union, invades West Germany as part of an effort to prevent the collapse of Communism and restore the Pact to its pre-Gorbachev "glory."  In addition, the developers looked at the existing mix of forces and tweaked them somewhat to reflect the real equipment and organization of units fielded by both East and W...