A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

© 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

© 1985, 2022 MicroProse/Atari   The last time I played the Operation Market-Garden scenario in Crusade of Europe - before my Apple IIe's monitor died on me - I was either 31 or 32 and it was still the mid-1990s. I recently bought the reissued Crusade in Europe by Atari (they took a 1985 game and tweaked it a bit so it would work on modern PCs) for $6.99. I still remembered how to play - heck, I spent countless hours playing that game when I was in college - but until today I stuck to the Normandy scenarios. © 1985, 2022 MicroProse/Atari Tonight - since I really don't do anything exciting here - I decided to try Operation Market-Garden: "A Bridge Too Far." © 1985, 2022 MicroProse/Atari I thought the computer would beat me since in real life the Allies did not gain a victory in Market-Garden. When I played the game regularly, sometimes I won, but most of the time I lost. Well, tonight I can honestly say...I did what Montgomery could not do in 1944. © 1985, 2022 MicroPr

© 1986, 2022 MicroProse/Atari  Back in the late 1980s, when I was in college, my father’s brother Sixto gave me my first computer, an Apple IIe with a color monitor and an ImageWriter printer. I had learned to use Apple computers at Miami-Dade Community College’s Apple Lab, so naturally, when I had an opportunity to get a computer of my own, I chose one that I was familiar with instead of what was then the less user-friendly IBM PC. I used my new computer primarily for college-related stuff; when I got it, I was already two-thirds of the way into the Spring Term at Miami-Dade and had a paper due for my Music Appreciation class. (As I recall, it wasn’t a term paper but a comparison of two recordings of a theme by John Williams from the score of The Empire Strikes Back. ) I received my Apple IIe only a few days before it was due, so it proved extremely useful to my academic endeavors right off the bat. Obviously, I also used my computer for gaming. Hell, I’m nearly 60 years old and

Image Credit: © 2014 Lenovo via Amazon  Hi there, Dear Reader. I know, I know; I haven't posted here in a while, but I have been busy on the WordPress version of this blog, and I don't always have either the time or the energy to work on both blogs. But, hey, I'm back to writing the 1,389th post for A Certain Point of View. As you can guess from the headline, this is a quick update to inform you that the computer I used to write most of the posts on this blog from April 2016 to January of this year is, sadly, no longer operational. It was working fine on Saturday morning when I booted it up, and it was running without any issues when I closed it down for a bit so I could watch a few episodes of 2019's Chernobyl.  However, when I tried to boot my Lenovo C560 "all-in-one" so I could game for a bit, it did not power up. At all. It was deathly still, with not a flicker from the monitor or a whir from its cooling fan.   I already wrote a more complete account of th

 Hey, there, Dear Reader. I know, I know. I don’t write too many posts here anymore. I regret that, but once a bunch of conservatives – or maybe it was only one or two conservatives, I don’t know for sure – complained to Facebook that I was posting politically-themed stuff that they didn’t like, the Powers That Be in Meta’s corporate HQ decided to block A Certain Point of View from the “Social Network.” I had no way to appeal that decision; Facebook/Meta makes it so hard to get a punitive decision regarding what you post on Facebook that it was just easier to go over to WordPress and create A Certain Point of View, Too. I did not want to, nor did I love the idea of paying a yearly fee to have my own domain name and other benefits from a premium account, but if I wanted to share my blog on Facebook – which was one of this blog’s biggest sources of readers – I had to do the “WordPress” thing. As I’ve said in previous posts on this topic, I thought I’d be able to either write two bl

© 2021 Harry N. Abrams/Abrams Books & 20th Century Studios   Hi there, Dear Reader. It’s Friday, February 4, 2022, and here in Lithia, Florida, it is a nice winter afternoon, Florida style. After a few days of near-freezing temperatures, we’re now in a warming trend. Outside, the temperature is 85˚F (29˚C) under partly sunny skies. With humidity at 57% and the wind blowing from the south-southwest, the heat index is 86˚F. Winter it may be, meteorologically and astronomically speaking, but it certainly feels like summer here. Well, as I sit here I’m keeping an eye on my Amazon account and the progress of my latest order. Yesterday I bought a copy of Laurent Bouzerau’s West Side Story: The Making of the Steven Spielberg Film. Published last November by Harry N. Abrams, a New York-based publishing company that specializes in books about art and entertainment, this is a 256-page, fully-illustrated behind the scenes account of how (and why) Steven Spielberg directed a second film ad

An enemy ship sinks in Cold Waters.  Game elements © 2017 Killerfish Games  Hi, there, Dear Reader. It's Monday, January 10, 2022, and finally, after two months of not posting anything in A Certain Point of View, I am back with a new - if perhaps brief - post.  I am happy to report that I got my Moderna (Spikevax) vaccine. I received my first shot in mid-November, and I got my second one just a few days before Christmas, I have not gone out anywhere since the second Fauci Ouchie, mainly because I don't go out much anyway, and the woman who used to take me places - doesn't do it anymore. I missed seeing Steven Spielberg's West Side Story because of this, and since there's no easy way for me to go to the nearest theater on my own, I'm resigned to having to wait till the film hits the home media market.  Anyway, I've been busy over on WordPress with our sister blog A Certain Point of View, Too. I write at least one post a day there, and currently, I am on a str