Oh my God! This game is absolutely brilliant - I played this for hours and hours on my C64 and fairly wore the keyboard overlay out! I got so immersed in the story of each mission - and the AI was so good you really started thinking their was a mean Russian captain in that other sub or on those destroyers trying to send you down to Davy's Locker!
Even on the C64 the sound effects were great, the graphics were great and the animations in the 'cutscenes' the best I had ever seen! You're all right, you need the manual to really get the best out of this - it is a typical Microprose manual - 120 pages of goodness with plenty of sub information beyond that of playing the game!
I also have this game on PC, and it's identical to the C64 version in almost every way. Considering the extra memory Microprose had to play with on the PC (even back then!), I think the AI is a little weaker, but not by enough to make the enemy as dumb as you get in some modern games!
I can barely think of a single Microprose title that was bad, and this is up there as one of my favourite games of all time. In fact my favourite PC game of all time is a Microprose title: Darklands, a 15th century Germany sim/RPG, and my second favourite PC title is another Microprose game - XCom! I would certainly put this title in my top 15-20 as well!
So once the manual is available, enjoy the read, learn the ropes and have a ball beneath the waves with this excellent excellent game!!!!
