Attic of the Underdogs

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Review by Underdogs:

One of the oldest naval wargames ever made, Avalon Hill's Battle for Midway (a.k.a. Midway Campaign) is a very primitive ASCII wargame written entirely in BASIC that simulates the battle of Midway Island in World War II. You must type in commands similar to text adventures, and there's no campaign mode to speak of. You can control either the Japanese fleet (including carriers Asagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, and Zuiho) or American (including carriers Enterprise, Hornet, Yorktown, and Midway). At the end of battle, the game will report whether any carrier has been lost, and how many planes on either side are shot down, as well as a bottom-line report of which side won the tactical victory. Overall, Battle for Midway is probably too primitive to hold anyone's interest for long, but it serves as a good history lesson of how wargames of the past are programmed... this being a BASIC program, you can "hack" the game pretty quickly to see how it was made ;)

Note: Additional comments from M.E. Brooks’ synopsis: "an operational/strategic simulation of the Midway Campaign, this game was one of the first Midway computer versions. Using an X-Y axis to depict operations during the battle gave an adequate challenge in 1980, but its design parameters were soon revealed to be obsolete."

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