So, when I first got into PC gaming (1987-88) I was enthralled that the nature of the PC games industry was far more niche than console gaming of the time. During this era, console game platforms, like the Atari 2600-7800 and early Nintendo, were almost entirely devoted to the Arcade game, with the occasional primitive RPG making its way into the mix. These games really weren't for me, and I learned how much they weren't for me the first time I booted up a PC and played Starflight. One of the biggest early draws for me into PC gaming were historical wargames. Historical Wargames didn't exist on console, they couldn't due to their nature. However, they were a huge part of the early PC game experience. Early wargames tended to concentrate on World War 2, the Napoleonic Wars and American Civil War, and I ate those up. Any game where I could move little NATO symbols around on a hexboard and sit there and spend hours pouring over spreadsheets about national production, I played it. It was a grand time.
Sadly, PC wargaming died off as a mainstream element of the genre. Wargames for the masses (Panzer General) started coming out in the mid-90's, and while they made wargames have mass appeal, they ended up dumbing down most wargames since everyone wanted to copy the success of the mass market programs. The real kicker came when Dune II from Westwood was released. Dune II gave birth to the Real Time Strategy genre, and RTS began to replace wargames as the heavy hitter of PC strategy. The traditional turn based Wargame died for the most part, and is now more than a rare sight in the Game store. The wargames that do exist are almost ALL World War II centric. And while I love World War II history, there's only so many times I can fight Stalingrad.
In a fit of nostalga, I recently tried to reinstall my favorite wargame of all time, Age of Rifles. Age of Rifles was awesome because of its extremely wide scope of history. AoR had everything from the Sepoy rebellions of India to the Civil War to Ishandlawana. It was a great game, and the only game I've EVER played with scenarios covering the Boer War, Mahdist Revolt, Chile-Uraguayan Pacific War, or American intervention in Korea in the 1870's. Obscurity was its strong suit, and I played that game for hours on end. Sadly, AoR is simply too old to run on modern machines and it simply couldn't be brought to pass on Windows XP. Saddened, I thought there was no where for me to turn for wargaming.
Enter Matrix games. After a search on the web to find resources for old wargames I might be able to play, I foud their website advertising a whole slew of direct download PC wargames. It seems that PC wargaming is alive and well and has essentially just given up on being able to appeal in the mass market on the store shelves. So, the old wargame makers have taken to the internet to do things Low Intensity Conflict style. The greats are still out there pounding out PC wargames, and if you want to play them, pop $30 down and they'll download the sucker straight to your hard drive. They'll even mail a physical copy for a small fee. My first experiment was with the game Forge of Freedom, a wargame about the American Civil War. I found that FoF was not just an in depth true turn based wargame about the Civil War, I found it was simply the most realistic game about the Civil War EVER MADE. My first campaign as the Union found me proceeding almost exactly the same as the US did in the real Civil War, my armies even ended up being very similar sizes (only difference being I lost). My Confederate Campaign has been about as realistic as can be, all the way down to my armies dwindling in size and relying on battlefield salvage for supply. I had a joygasm when I found that my best strategy in early 1863 was to send Lee into Maryland on a campaign of intimidation in order to try to drum up support from England for an intervention. Very very good stuff.
Matrix isn't the only game company out there that's doing the same thing with PC wargames. If you're interested in this stuff, visit
www.wargamer.com. There's actually a plethora of solid wargames still being made for the few of us willing to play them. My next purchase will probably be Distant Guns, a hyper accurate real time simulation of Naval Combat in the Russo-Japanese war made by the designer of Age of Rifles, Norm Koger. Distant Guns is unique in that it's free as a 30 day purchase, after which it requires only a nominal sum to buy. The only sad thing is that I have no time to play. Ah well.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
