Submarine Commander

1982 retro games Atari games Apple games

Early submarine simulator published in 1982 - as captain of an U-Boat you cruise around Mediterranean Sea during World War II and chase the Allied convoys.

Submarine Commander was an early submarine simulator, well first on personal computers anyway. Still it was far from future standards, but better than the previously available arcade games that concentrated on shooting the torpedoes from static submarine. In Submarine Commander we are in charge of German U-Boat cruising around Mediterranean Sea and chasing the Allied convoys, with limited torpedoes (80 to be exact), limited fuel and limited crew, which puts it somewhere between the arcade games and future submarine simulators.

The mechanics of the game were simple - f.e. if you fire torpedo while making a turn the torpedoes are moving with the display, and not continue on the previously set course, so the best practice was to just fire the torpedoes aimlessly and while they run, keep the target in the middle of the display. The interface was a bit hard to handle - switching rudder from one side to the other took a lot of time, which made hard navigating on the map, not to mention during the clash with the enemy. Similar story with the sonar - it gives you idea where the enemy is, but the delay between pings is so long, that the data you see could be way off, f.e. if you are turning the target could move over 90 degrees between pings.

Submarine Commander was not a great game, but we have to give credit where credit is due - it was first game that can be called submarine simulator on personal computers, so the creator, Dean Lock, had to invent parts of the interface since there was almost nothing he could use as model for his production.

Our rating
★★☆☆☆

Video
★★☆☆☆

Audio
★★☆☆☆

Playability
★★☆☆☆

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comments

I remember playing it in late 1980s - it was hard to master
old man (01-03-2021 14:45:43)

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