A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

West German Leopard 2As in action during Reaction , one of several Operations in MicroProse's new real-time tactics wargame Regiments . ⓒ 2022 MicroProse & Bird's Eye Games  On August 16, MicroProse released a new real-time tactics game titled Regiments. Developed by a small European game design studio called Bird's Eye Games, Regiments depicts ground warfare in central Europe in an alternate version of 1989 in which Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms in the Soviet Union failed, the Berlin Wall never fell, and a failed anti-Communist rebellion is the catalyst for armed conflict between the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact and the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Taking its cue from several wargames that involve deployment points, victory points, and the defense or capture of Objective Zones (think Wargame: AirLand Battle or Steel Division ), Regiments puts you in command of a battalion, regiment, or brigade-sized unit on either side of the Iron Curtain and tests yo...

The wreckage of a Soviet tank platoon burns on a West German battlefield after an airstrike carried out by two A-10A Thunderbolt II ground-attack jets. © 2022 Bird's Eye Games/MicroProse  On Tuesday, August 16, the revived software publishing company MicroProse released Regiments , a new real-time tactics wargame set in a version of 1989 when perestroika, glasnost,  and the collapse of the Soviet Union never happened, and the Warsaw Pact invades West Germany. Developed by indie game studio Bird's Eye Games, Regiments is a look at combined-arms warfare at the brigade/regimental level that allows players to command units from either the Russian-led Warsaw Pact (WP) forces or the Western alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in a searing, life-or-death struggle to determine which side will win this Cold War-Turns-Hot after internal pressures within East Germany push Communist hardliners in Moscow to use force to preserve the Communist regime in East Berlin - and settl...

A Chinese destroyer is hit by a torpedo in this "low-light" periscope view in Cold Waters . (All of the illustrations are actual screengrabs from sessions of Cold Waters, and all game design elements are © 2017 Killerfish Games As you know, one of my favorite computer games of recent vintage is Killerfish Games’ Cold Waters (2017), a submarine warfare simulator that was inspired by MicroProse Software’s classic “subsim” Red Storm Rising (1988). I bought Cold Waters nearly two years ago during Steam’s Fourth of July Sale for 2020. I had added the game to my “wish list” on Steam (just as I have MicroProse’s Regiments and Second Front on my wish list now) in 2017 because I thought paying $49.99 or more when the game was new and buggy was a bit too much for my taste. Eventually, though, Steam offered it at a price that I could afford, and by 2020 all the “bugs” and kinks in the game had been fixed. For the better part of my time playing Cold Waters, I avoided playing the Campaig...

HIJMS Shokaku burns in Silent Service II's An Embarrassment of Riches scenario. © 1990, 2015 MicroProse/Retroism (Tommo)  Hi, there, Dear Reader. As you know, my favorite video games or computer simulations deal with some aspects of military conflict. Whether it’s a flight simulator along the lines of F-15 Strike Eagle II or a land warfare sim like M1 Tank Platoon or a grand-strategy game along the lines of Strategic Command WWII: World at War, if it is action-packed, historically interesting, yet not so complex that you must earn a degree in Military Science to play it, the wargame genre is my favorite. Within that category, there is a sub -category of wargame that I am fascinated by, and that’s the submarine simulation game. "Logbook" of USS Cavalla, © 1990, 2015 MicroProse/Retroism (Tommo) Since 1987, I have owned quite a few submarine-centric games. The first one I owned was Silent Service , which was published in 1985 by the original MicroProse Software. Desig...

A view from the periscope from my not-so-new game "Cold Waters."  © 2017 Killerfish Games  As you might recall, I have a Steam account that I opened when I bought Sid Meier's Civilization V in the Spring of 2015. I still lived in Miami then, and though she only had a few short months to live, my mom was still alive. And because I was so damn busy, tired, and stressed out by my dual role as homeowner-to-be and my dying mother's primary caregiver, I just thought Steam was for that game and didn't bother to learn that it was a company that not only helped Civ V work well online, but it was a source for downloadable games from various developers and publishers.  I started buying downloads of games from Steam directly about a year-and-a-half after I moved to Lithia, Florida, in 2016. I did so because streaming/downloading games in the 21st Century is as routine as buying "in-the-box" games that you installed with floppies (the late 1980s to early '90s) or...

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 ...