Red Storm Rising
1988 games Atari ST gamesAmiga gamesCommodore 64 gamesPC games
submarine simulatorssimulator games
Long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far... Wait a minute, Atlantic Ocean is not far, far away. And Cold War was not that long ago. And Red Storm Rising is not as bad as it looked.
At first glance, you would not guess that Red Storm Rising was a simulator - the graphic side was rather basic, at best it looks like Harpoon (which was an amazing game, but it did not look pretty and it was not a simulator). So, how Red Storm Rising, looking the way it looks, could be considered a simulator? It is a matter of scale.
The game was based upon a book by Tom Clancy (titled, what a surprise, Red Storm Rising), in which the Cold War was turning into an open conflict - USSR was invading Germany, NATO was rushing to block them and at the same time prepare some counter-measures. And in this open conflict you, as a player in the game, become a commander of an American nuclear-powered submarine operating in the North Atlantic. So far, so typical of late 1980s games. The "simulator" bit was rather superficial - yes, you could prepare loadout, engage the enemy using a tactical view screen, but this is as far as the simulation goes. There are no other views, even the bridge is not represented by any image.
But Red Storm Rising had an ace up its sleeve, and it was the world behind our gameplay - each successful mission was slowing down the progress of Warsaw Pact forces, each time you screw up, the situation at the front is getting worse. Between each engagement you could see the map of Northern Atlantic and Europe, where you can observe the current situation. The missions you have to take part in usually involve intercepting enemy forces (surface ships or submarines), so you will end up in the tactical screen each time, trying to outsmart the opponents.
The game also had different starting points (from 1984 to 1996), in each scenario the global situation was slightly different and the enemies you will have to face were slightly different. So, as a simulator Red Storm Rising was a bit of stretch, but as a mixture of tactical simulation with a living world, it was something new. In that sense it was similar to M1 Tank Platoon - not really a simulator, not really a strategy, but something between, and you could spend hours playing different scenarios.
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