A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

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 MicroPr

© 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