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[SolarStorm]

A few years back (probably more than a few), I remember playing this game on my computer.

I don't know when the game was made. Best guess is 80's, though possibly early 90's (though don't bet too heavily on it).

I'm not sure about the specifics of the computer I had it on. I know it was a Dell, and I THINK the processor was a Pentium II or III.

The OS I had installed was Windows 98, but I can't remember if the game was actually running in Windows or whether it was running in DOS.

Graphics - not much. If I had to guess, I'd have to go with 4 colour CGA.

Sound - I think it was mostly beeping. Again, my memory sucks, but I wouldn't rule out 8bit sound, especially as I think I had the sound turned off most of the time.

Speech? That's a definitive NO.

Gameplay and Perspective:
This was a WWII, turn-based, grand strategy game set in Europe and North Africa (barely). And by set in, I mean that was the map. The screen was mostly taken up by the map of Europe, with the land coloured black and the sea blue. The right-hand side of the screen had a grey-coloured sidebar with white text.
To give an idea of the scale of the map, here are some dimensions (again, from memory so may not be perfect):

• The northernmost point of the map was a line of latitude passing just to the south of Denmark, perhaps even right on the border.
• The southernmost point was a line of latitude passing through Tunisia, just south of Tunis.
• The westernmost point was a line of longitude that either passed right along the Portuguese/Spanish border or it was in the North Atlantic, just off the Portuguese coast by 100 miles or so. I'm a little hazy on that one.
• The easternmost point was a line of longitude just to the east of Kiev

There were major cities on the map, each represented by a coloured circle (to show occupation status - i.e. Axis, Allied, Neutral). These cities had one or more lines that lead to neighbouring cities, and this way armies could move from one city to another.

Armies were represented by a textbox showing a flag of its country of origin, size, experience and type (infantry, armour, artillery, static, combined) and each could be moved, rested, trained, etc. once per turn.

The number of cities you had determined your income. You could spend this income on raising more armies, researching, building an air force (up to 10 planes), building a navy (up to 10 ships) or building fortifications. Research had an initially high likelihood of failure but those chances decreased with each failed attempt. Aircraft had a limited range, denoted by a circle around them. The air force had the ability to deploy paratroopers. The air force would be wiped out if they were in a city when it was captured. The same was not true of naval forces. They would be able to bombard the city, weakening armies residing there, or if the city was unoccupied, make it neutral. Any neutral or friendly city could then have marines deployed.

You could play either as the Axis or the Allies, start in any war year (1939-1945), with varying levels of difficulty, etc.

Is that enough detail?

[RRS]

All those strategy games look fairly similar... you can always start by browsing this list: http://www.mobygames.com/game-group/...set,500/so,1d/

[SolarStorm]

Did that before I came here, but no joy.

Just want to add that even though you may think 'those' strategy games look similar, this is the only one I've seen that relies on what is essentially a waypoint system for movement, instead of something more conventional like a grid - whether they be hexes, squares or irregular, adjoining shapes.

[SolarStorm]

FOUND IT! After a week of obsessive searching - it was actually starting to affect my work - I asked here if anyone knew. Well, it only took another 5 days or so of even more (unhealthy?) obsessive searching to find it. Here's a link to a screenshot:

http://www.hutsellgames.com/wp-conte...screenshot.jpg

As it turns out, the land isn't black, it was published in 1995, not in the 80s (though from the simple colours and interface you can hopefully see my confusion) and I'm guessing that isn't a CGA colour palette.

Game Name: World War II In Western Europe
Creator: W. R. Hutsell
Download Location: http://archive.org/details/WorldWarIiInWesternEurope

For anyone interested, it seems archive.org has a "Classic PC Games" collection at http://archive.org/details/classicpcgames and it doesn't seem to appear in a google search unless you're really looking for it. So yeah, case closed, and there's another resource for game hunters to browse through.