«

[Sebatianos]

Feel free to comment and discuss this game here. Also, if you have any useful tips or tricks don't hesitate to share them with the others! Thanks!

Review and download (if available)

[rlbell]

While the game may actually be an apalling sub sim (how should I know, I have never seen more than pictures of subs), it does a very good job of expressing the atmosphere of modern underwater combat. You need to act on incomplete information and are rewarded when your educated guess on the class of the sonar target is correct, with better knowledge of its location. The mechanism for dodging or decoying torpedoes may be inaccurate, but you know that you are trying to have the torpedo listen for you where you are not.

It is a very good game and actually more fun than 688 Attack Sub, by EA.

[Geezer]

Did I hear someone say that they would like to see a manual and box shots for this game?

[Sebatianos]

Hearing vocies again, are we? :worried:

Better listen to them, they're absolutely right! :amused:

[Geezer]

Wow! I'm not sure which is bigger the manual for this game or the Clancy novel. It's a really nice manual but it's 100 pages. I might have a hard time getting it below the 11MB limit. I'll see what I can do. Judging by the looks of it the manual would make the game much easier and enjoyable to play. I'll scan the map and keyboard templates as well.

BTW, I want 100 extra pieces of eight for this one. lol

EDIT: OK, since the manual is divided into three sections I am going to scan each one as a separate document.
1. The Operations Manual
2. The Captains Manual
3. The Reference Manual

Don't get confused by the page numbers.

[humorguy]

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!!!!

[Japo]

YES Microprose is the best company ever, that's a fact :cool:

My buddies and I used to play this game and Gunship on the C64 for hours at a time!
We each had a profile saved and would compete by taking turns as the sub commander. Seeing this is really just a single player game and there were three of us who wanted to play the game together cooperatively (this was before the days of LAN gaming) we devised our own method to turn this monsterous game into a multiplayer.
I had one of those airsoft revolvers that shot out these spring-loaded plastic shots. There were only six of them that could be loaded at a time and the gun looked very real (you wouldn't be able to get by with this or even buy this toy pistol now in today's "P.C." world). [Now, don't try this next part at home kiddies -- this was over twenty years ago]
One of us would take turn as the sub commander and would be in charge of issuing commands. The sub commander was not allowed to touch the computer controls at all and would watch the action take place over the shoulders of his two crewmen. The other two players would each take a role as a crewman. One in charge of weapons systems and sonar and the other in charge of navigation and countermeasures. So you had two guys sharing the keyboard and the way it divided up really worked out well. Then you had the commander barking out orders. Crewmen were not allowed to disobey a direct command but they could offer suggestions and recommendations to the commander. If a crewman was disobedient he was "shot" with a plastic pellet and would be immediately replaced by another crewman played by the same player. If a crewman were "retired" by the last shot from the commander's weapon then that player was out of the game altogether and the captain would then have the choice to either turn total control of the sub over to the remaining player or he could take the place of the retired player himself.
We did kind of the same thing with Gunship. Let me tell you, it was a blast and we had some very memorable moments that we all three still recall to this day even though we don't get to see one another nearly as often as we used to back then. To this day, one of the guys still has the nickname "Ceasefire" because everytime he took to the air in Gunship he would open fire on friendly targets by mistake and the C64 version would flash a message on the screen which read "Ceasefire! Friendly troops have been hit!" We'd yell out "Hey, Ceasefire! They're talking to you!" Good times! :-)

[humorguy]

Originally Posted by JMB

Wow! I'm not sure which is bigger the manual for this game or the Clancy novel. It's a really nice manual but it's 100 pages. I might have a hard time getting it below the 11MB limit. I'll see what I can do. Judging by the looks of it the manual would make the game much easier and enjoyable to play. I'll scan the map and keyboard templates as well.

BTW, I want 100 extra pieces of eight for this one. lol

EDIT: OK, since the manual is divided into three sections I am going to scan each one as a separate document.
1. The Operations Manual
2. The Captains Manual
3. The Reference Manual

Don't get confused by the page numbers.

JMB - Having just downloaded all the 'extras' I have to say a huge big thank-you for all your hard work on these items! The way you even highlighted the contents of each manual section, to show the reader what part of the whole manual was being read was extra professional in my book! The quality of the scanning was also impressive! So a big thumbs up to you M8 - and realise at least 0.2 of the 4.6 scored for this game is because of the documentation!

[Geezer]

Always glad to do what I can. We can be grateful that Abandonia places an emphasis on hosting the documents as well. There are so many games (like this one) that would be difficult to play without the manual. When you read the docs the game enters a new level of realism.