It’s exciting when someone publishes long-form on a subject you’ve been researching for years. Here’s a thread commenting on this article in more detail. If you do the retro computer, read the article & then come back here. Apologies and respect in advance to @ernie.tedium.co 🧵👇

Operation Cerberus (1985) by Colin Bishop is the only game I know about the Feb '42 Channel Dash. The strategic layer is cosmetic; the game is rather a collection of minigames depending on what you attack with (plane, MTB, destroyer or even Dover guns!) Review here: zeitgame.net/archives/19428

I published the end of my Gulf Strike AAR. I focused on how the game came to be, from the board game designed by SPI survivors who fled to Avalon Hill, to the port by @nyrath.bsky.social, a Renaissance man to which we also own among others the iconic look of the OGRE. zeitgame.net/archives/19330

everyone should checkout Messenger by Abeto. it's a free browser game where ur just a little delivery kid on a little planet! messenger.abeto.co

Back to traditional cwargames with Avalon Hill's Gulf Strike (1984), with an unexpected US+Iran+Peninsular Arabs alliance against Iraq+USSR. Bad UI (2 icons for everything - check the 4th screenshot) & major design flaws make this early monster game mediocre. Read my AAR: zeitgame.net/archives/19231

All the Adventures aims to give the history about and play every adventure game ever made in chronological order. The 1982 sequence has just concluded, and I've written a post looking back and collecting some notable games. #history #adventuregame bluerenga.blog/2025/05/14/a...

Paul Clansey's Alien (1984) is the first official game of the licence. Quite innovative and supported by excellent SFX, this Alien managed to create really tense moments; alas its many design issues and outright bugs will ruin most sessions. AAR and context of the game: zeitgame.net/archives/18838

Just published: Reyes y Castillos (1984) - the first Argentinian game of my blog. It's terrible, but I learned a lot of things researching Argentina & Uruguay, so it's not a total loss. I made sure the 2 last screenshots included lunfardo (rioplatenese argot)! Read more: zeitgame.net/archives/18350

Back with the article on computing & gaming in Uruguay. There was a weird Coleco ADAM presence, but Brazilian clones TK90S bagged close to 50% of the market. Uruguay also had a Spectrum peripherical that would make the Brits jealous Discover why: zeitgame.net/archives/18891

Just out: my article on the beginnings of computing & gaming in Argentina, from the first computer (1961) to the end of the 80s. What was the first Argentinian game? Why isn't there any famous Argentinian company until the 90s (and even then very few of them). Read here: zeitgame.net/archives/18373

In theory, Synapse's Air Support (1984) is a game for everyone with an arcade mode (combat-focused) and a strategy mode (where you move infantry around). In practice, it's jack of all trades, adequate at none. It was also released at the worst possible moment. Read more: zeitgame.net/archives/18753

In the "wargame subgenres that did not pass the test of time" category, there is "Air Defense", in which you allocate fighters to enemy bombing squadrons. This subgenre was particularly popular in UK (probably due to the Battle of Britain) - here are four examples below, but there are more (1/2)

Today for All the Adventures I have a most unusual post, as a game by Kim Watt (likely from 1980) was left in a non-functional state by the author and now is fixed and playable for the first time. bluerenga.blog/2025/07/12/m...

All I can say about War Zone (1984, CCS) is that it is a wargame. It is the most generic experience I can think of. No salient feature whatsoever, and no huge flaw, beyond its absolute blandness. Still praised at release because there were so few wargames then. AAR: zeitgame.net/archives/18490

Before Civilization, there was a Civ-like(ish): Incunabula (1984). It included most of the Civ-like staples: Research, Disasters, City-Building, choice of politics, trade and of course warfare. It missed dedicated combat units and stopped at the bronze age. Read my AAR: zeitgame.net/archives/18543

Turn 4 of Warlords A short turn with only two impulses. This is bad for my rival Rastignak though: Morpheus manages to push him back from the border of his castle and retake a town, and I start my move against Dayyalu's former castle - wealthy yet isolated. Rastignak was poised to win. Not anymore.

Turn 3 of the Warlords' (1978) AAR;I received only two impulses vs three for the other players this turn :( Rastignak moves first AGAIN and garrisons Xity. I move away. He then beeline for Morpheus and defeats his main army in front of M's castle - but the turn ends there so Morpheus can rebuild.

But the random turn order every impulse favours Rastignak, and he gets to garrison his city before I can launch my assault. I am not willing to attack a city with "only" a 3:2 ratio, and I take a poor territory instead. That's the last impulse of the turn.

Turn 2: A lot of impulses, and a player already down (1/5)

Turn 1: Rastignak proposes that I seize the unguarded Dayyalu's castle from the North while Dayyalu is moving South. I don't see the point given Rastignak has the best start and it's a risky move anyway. Good choice: the number of impulses every turn is random, and the first turn has only one!

We open on the game's 7x7 map. In each tile, the first number is terrain (T= Town, F= Forest, etc), the second pop/revenue, the third owner. The number below is soldiers. My C[astle] has a population of only six! Not a great start for me: low starting revenue, and the rich X[ity] is far away! [3/3]

I am going to try something new: an AAR through BlueSky. The game is going to be Speakeasy Software's Warlord. It was released in 1978C; if you don't include imports from Mainframe it is, to my knowledge, one of the first 3 (with Tankics and Starfleet Orion). [Intro 1/3]

Siege on the Volga (1984) is the first computer wargame specifically about the Battle of Stalingrad. Great presentation, w/ a map & counters to visualize the battle (unnecessary, as the in-computer game map is good), but shallow and easy. Hard to see why the Germans lost. zeitgame.net/archives/18269

Storm Trooper (1984). There isn't a lot of nice things to say about this type-in game, except that it held in only 3 pages! In any case, squad tactical is my favorite genre, so I had to cover it. zeitgame.net/archives/18072 I haven't posted lately, but I got stuck on long games. That's over :).

Is it a clone when the game you're cloning was released after you? Colonel Luebbert's Star Trek (1972) is a "Trek73-clone" that predates Trek73. Pretty limited as a game (1972 after all), but I had a lot to say about its author, who introduced computers to West Point. zeitgame.net/archives/17914

SSI's Breakthrough of the Ardennes (1984), by Chuck Kroegel (now CEO of @petroglyphgames.bsky.social) and David Landrey is a good wargame for the era, and another example of how boardgames influenced computer wargames in the 80s - in this case Breakthrough's key feature comes from Bastogne (1/4).

Most of the games I cover are forgotten for good reasons - they're shallow and unrealistic, and superseded by later efforts. This is the case of Redcoats (MC Lothlorien, 1984). Initially developed for the BBC Micro, its Spectrum port turned a bad game into a terrible one. zeitgame.net/archives/17496

RIP Jack W Greene Un célèbre concepteur de Wargames qui était aussi un auteur en histoire militaire (un des premiers à avoir pris en compte le point de vue italien pour l'histoire de la SGM en Afrique du Nord).

The first space 4X was most probably Empire on PLATO. It was multiplayer-only, real-time (!) but is now lost media. Still, from what we know it had all the Xs, including Explore and Exploit (=develop). I never covered it, but the DataDriven did: datadrivengamer.blogspot.com/2019/07/game... (1/5)

Sometimes, I cover games where Panzer divisions are historically named & equipped. Sometimes, I cover games where drunk vikings fight for a freezing fjord. Viking Raiders is surprisingly decent, and showcases how British Telecom penetrated the gaming market in '84. Read: zeitgame.net/archives/17068

Avalon Hill's Ram! (1984) is the first computer game about ancient naval warfare. However, it is a terrible game with a fatal flaw: in a game about ramming, collision detection is awful! First AAR here: zeitgame.net/archives/17035

Not a wargame, but I just covered Avalon Hill's Beast War (1985). By that point, Avalon Hill had failed to penetrate the computer market. However, they kept releasing third-party in auto-mode without any platform, genre or style cohesion, so Beast War is an Apple2 only action-arcade (1/2).

Up to 1984, the Pacific War genre is stale on computer, with the alternative being between tedious "realistic" game that asks you to micromanage everything and beer-and-pretzel games that were sometimes good, but not in anyway realistic. None of those games let you play the Japanese (1/3).

Sometimes I like to create memes rather than finish articles. @cedricmas.bsky.social

In September 1981, SSI released Paul Murray's Napoleon's Campaign, an incredibly ambitious game covering the battles of Leipzig and Waterloo at the Corps level. The game did everything that board games could not do: Fog of War, delayed ordered, Corps Commander acting on their Initiative, etc (1/3).

A bit out of brand, but not totally. I recently found a great [short] video on the Italian military doctrine and I loved it. The Italian army/navy is worth way more than its reputation, and generally its reputation is all people (me included) know about it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh4e...

The games I cover are obsolete, but sometimes they are fun to play. And sometimes, they were fun AND ignored at their release. Avalon Hill's Dreadnoughts (1984) is one of these. AH's second take on the Bismarck, it's fun & easy to pick-up. I loved destroying ASCII BCs! zeitgame.net/archives/16662

Company Commander (1984) is an ambitious tactical game for the Color Computer successful enough to receive 3 versions, 4 scenario modules and a scenario editor. Alas, it is a mess, unbalanced and frustrating - successful only because there was nothing else on the Coco. zeitgame.net/archives/16603

This week on The Digital Antiquarian: Railroad Tycoon II www.filfre.net/2025/01/rail...

The Japanese conquest of the Dutch East Indies (+Burma) is rarely covered in wargames. Like everyone, Carriers at War focused on the usual Pacific battles. at launch. In 1986, it backtracked on the topic for the first time in cwargaming. The Dutch never had a chance. zeitgame.net/archives/16547

I reached the first Spanish strategy game in my quest to play all Computer Wargames. I used the opportunity to cover the beginnings of Spanish gaming, from "nothing" in 1982 to, maybe, "second only to UK in Europe" by 1989. Oddly, this is thanks to the textile industry. zeitgame.net/archives/15599

@a37927.bsky.social ¿Don Antonio, está el enemigo? Que se ponga. zeitgame.net/archives/15582