Pacific War(Matrix) vs War in the Pacific

[MB00]

Sorry for being dense, guys.

Why are there 2 different games? Does one work on windows and the other in DOS?

Are they different Games? What is the relationship if any?
While i sold War in Europe....yes, i still possess the paper version of War in the Pacific(SSI). When my kids leave the house, i may consider using it to position my units to help the visual aspect of playing the computer game.

My 17 yr old son has never been interested in WWII games. I wish anyone well when trying to get their sons interested in our hobby. He plays many computer games though...Heroes of Might & Magic, Quake, Diablo II(all of which i have never tried).

[Gabby]

There are two different games, because they are seperated by seven years of technology, and expierence. And yes one runs on DOS(But the updated matrix version will wun in windows) and the other windows.

However they do cover the same subject, and the lead desinger is the same in both cases.

To use an extream comparasion, look at the P-51, and the F-86. Both are fighters built by North Amercian, and seperated by about five years, but the Saber was a big leap in technology, and performance.

I know what you mean about getting your son into gaming. My son loves to game, but it is restricted to card games and RPG's. Anything historcial turns has no appeal to him.

[pasternakski]

Well said, Gabby.

There are a few more differences that make the two games separately enjoyable.

Pacific War, for example, plays on a "point-to-point" layout of paths connecting the bases, by both land and sea. You can see the land routes by clicking "paths" on the map display toolbar, but the sea routes have to be learned from experience (I do have a map I downloaded from someplace on the Internet I've since forgotten that shows these paths).

War in the Pacific, on the other hand, will allow much more latitude of movement across the map (although the very restrictive ground terrain will dictate certain routes).

Pacific War handles combat, task force formation, air units, base construction, and a lot of other important things far differently from the way WITP will handle them. It has a different "feel" and "flavor."

It also happens to be one of my all-time favorite computer wargames. I doubt that my addiction to it will ever go away. WITP will play like a King Kong-sized version of Uncommon Valor (with a lot of stuff added, like production, industry, and such). It, too, will wind up at the top of my all-time list, I am sure.

I am tickled that I am going to have TWO of these beasts to enjoy instead of just ONE (and if I had Gary Grigsby's feel for game conception and design and he had a feather up his butt, we'd BOTH be tickled).

[VictorH]

One is free, the other will cost $50.

[pasternakski]

Originally posted by VictorH
One is free, the other will cost $50.

[MB00]

ok, to summarize what i understood.

Pacific War(Matrix) will run in Windows 98.
War in the Pacific is strictly DOS based.
Due to magnitude of game, i would think that Windows98 version is more stable. comments?

The Windows98 Pacific War(Matrix) is a newer version by perhaps 5 yrs.

Pacific War(Matrix) has specific movement routes for shipping and perhaps land units...across land terrain. The DOS version "War in the Pacific" allows more free movement by player...but is also constrained by terrain? features.

One costs $50 and other zippo. Which one costs and which one is free? Can one get credit for updating a version 1.0 ?? Am i correct to interpret that the Matrix version is free for downloading...via how from where?

To avoid RAM issues, i suspect that i would default to the windows version.

My perception of the cardboard copy was that this was the most massive game out there. I had designed about 15-20 forms for record keeping...but only convinced my friends to set it up once. We may have made a half hearted test 1st week American move.

A computer AI would be poor at best considering the myriad choices available. Hence, the original version 1.0 must have been just filled with SSI - Grigsby hidden cheats. This perception discouraged me from ever trying it. Has this been toned down to give a player against the computer an even break?

I have another week of vacation and am undecided to try this game, try to learn to fly a computer airplane over western states, or go on a reading binge...along with house - garage fall cleanup exercises. My ftf game friend is trying to interest me in a recent paper civil war game as well. Sid Mier's computer Antitam is a potential learning / reminder method to prepare myself to think Civil War...though i very much dislike commanders who refuse to follow orders when given. The anguish of decision is annoying enough without insubordination.

Another thread suggested that one should consider about 9 house rules as optional for both sides. I interpret that the WIP game has yet many mis-balanced features to it...which was actually true of the actual war.

Decisions decisions. Thanks for listening.

[pasternakski]

Originally posted by Mike B
My perception of the cardboard copy was that this was the most massive game out there. I had designed about 15-20 forms for record keeping...but only convinced my friends to set it up once. We may have made a half hearted test 1st week American move.

A computer AI would be poor at best considering the myriad choices available. Hence, the original version 1.0 must have been just filled with SSI - Grigsby hidden cheats. This perception discouraged me from ever trying it. Has this been toned down to give a player against the computer an even break?

Nononononononononono.

I hardly know where to begin. There is no "cardboard copy" of either of these games. Their ancestry is back in the late eighties as early Gary Grigsby (Solomons Campaign, War in the South Pacific, Carrier Force, among others) simulations that had characteristics in common with board war games, but that also were sophisticated enough as computer simulations, even at that early time, to take advantage of the technology - and live within the technological limitations - of their day. These early games are milestones in the development of computer gaming and stand to this day on their own merits as testaments to the excellence of the design expertise of Gary Grigsby and those who worked with him on this "cutting edge" of computer game design.

Even these early games were remarkably free of the "AI cheat" phenomenon that dominated early computer wargame design. Grigsby's designs did cheat, to some extent (how did you make an 8-bit machine competitive with human players, who could replay ad infinitum and were (usually) more flexibly intelligent than the computer?), but you always had an option in the setup menu to augment your side as the human player so that you had at least an even chance while perfecting the strategies, through replay, that would defeat the computer player (I will never forget the instruction manual to War in the South Pacific in this regard. It included a table that gave aircraft reinforcement rates for both the human and computer sides. Next to an entry indicating that the computer's reinforcement rate for a particularly important type of aircraft - Zeroes, as I recall - was twice that for a human player was a parenthetical that boldly declared, "Yes, it cheats").

As another poster to this thread pointed out, Pacific War is free. It has been revised any number of times by Matrix Games since they first took it on as an offering of trust and friendship to the gaming public (the most recent version is 3.1, available on the Matrix Games site which you should visit to get more comprehensive information on this fine company than I can give you here. It is www.matrixgames.com).

Buy Uncommon Valor, the Matrix Games precursor to War in the Pacific (the game systems are very much the same, but UV covers a major campaign in, not the entirety of, the war in the Pacific, and so, could be considered an introduction (though an intense one that is a self-contained game of its own significant merit). If your mind is at all stimulated by the challenge of strategic command in the Pacific theater of WWII, WITP will be an absolute must-have.

If your thing is flight simulators, go back to cleaning up the house. If you buy UV or WITP or download PacWar or (shudder) do all three as I have done (and intend to do), you may never clean your house again - you'll be too busy with such considerations as, "Now, how do I design my campaign against the Americans at Noumea in order to defeat them before their vast reinforcements overwhelm me?"

Good luck, and good shooting.

[Gabby]

pasternakski is correct in his discriptions of differences of the two games. There would be no reason that a fan of WWII Pacific War would not enjoy both.

But to address a couple of your points, 1. Pacific War originaly started out as a DOS game, but the current version runs with no problem on Win98. It is also free and available now.

2. War in the Pacific is not available yet, maybe later this year or early next, and will most likley have a $50+ price tag.

I Hope this helps.

[MB00]

I managed to download the 6 meg file.
Unfortunately to my sons machine....as mine is not directly connected to the internet. I will make a point of sitting on him or Rogers tomorrow to get my machine operational on the internet to download this, UV, and WIR Assistant.

First observations....THOSE Colours! It looks good.
Second observation....yes, i have played this game before....about 2-3 times as each side. There was something peculiar about central China and airplanes that could not reach to the appropriate target. Dont remember exactly where/what.

Version 1.0(1994) is simply a grouping of lines between land bases and not so colourful units.

QQP had a very simplified War in the South Pacific as well.

While a H2H game of WIP would be more challenging than the AI version, I suspect the nail biting comes down to the UV game wherein one is likely choosing bombing weapons, and when to ready the planes or not.

Pasternatski / Gabby
I know this thread felt like a pain and i do appreciate your efforts trying to welcome me to the forum. I have never been good at flight similators. My only interest in that western USA flight sim is 4km per pixel or somesuch vs the reallife cost of a good helicopter ride through say the Grand Canyon.

at the moment, i am still married so that house cleaning which has been somewhat lacking for the past year needs catching up. One room in the basement is even so high with paper, used computers, chairs, magazines and such, that even i rarely dare treading into it for fear of making it all fall into a pile such that i would slip on the loose papers and hit my head(admittedly on piles of soft paper[are stacked magazines soft?])

Thanks guys. I have 1 and perhaps a pending WIR game in motion. My son doesn't drive yet...but wants to be in mens hockey this winter so i guess i get to be the lucky driver[again]. When i am more comfortable with my autumn / winter schedule, i hope to try an H2H PBEM either UV or WIP game. I do not consider it polite to have an opponent start up a game with you when you have doubts of your timing commitments.
Hope you hear from me on the forum before xmas 2002.

out and bye.

[Svar]

Originally posted by Gabby

2. War in the Pacific is not available yet, maybe later this year or early next, and will most likley have a $50+ price tag.

I Hope this helps.

I don't remember where I saw it but I do remember seeing a price tag of $69.99 for WitP.

[Gabby]

Glad to be of help.

[CaptDave]

Pacific War also runs quite well on Windows NT. I would guess it'll run on any Windows version that doesn't choke on DOS.

While not an exact match, PacWar is, if I remember correctly from way back when, based on the board game Pacific War published by Victory Games (later gobbled up by AH). The computer version has morphed to the point that the maps are quite incongruous by now.

[pasternakski]

Originally posted by CaptDave
While not an exact match, PacWar is, if I remember correctly from way back when, based on the board game Pacific War published by Victory Games (later gobbled up by AH). The computer version has morphed to the point that the maps are quite incongruous by now.

Hiya, Dave. Sorry to report that your wargaming development history is inaccurate. All of the permutations of Pacific war strategic and operational boardgame simulations are of one genesis, and all of the Gary Grigsby-originated computer simulations related to the same subject come from a different evolutionary line.

Victory's Pacific War (published after Victory had been acquired by AH's parent company) was one in a series of monster cardboard-and-paper game depictions of strategic war in the Pacific theater. This strain originated in the early SPI games (mid-1970s) USN and Solomons Campaign. These, in turn, were developed as responses to the successful 1960s Avalon Hill games "Midway" and "Guadalcanal."

Jim Dunnigan, of SPI editorial fame, had a proclivity for making strategic-level games. He wanted more than USN, which was an extremely abstract (and, some would say, awkwardly unsuccessful) presentation of the Pacific war from 1941 through 1943. He and his cohorts reached their zenith with "War in the Pacific," a truly monster game with thousands of counters and seven maps (these, in pristine condition, now sell for up to $500 and more on eBay). Many pretenders followed, including, in the late eighties, a product from the Fresno Gaming Association called "The Eagle and the Sun," which was an unapologetic ripoff of WITP with unplayable rules and beautiful counters. The product most similar to Victory's effort was "Pacific Theater of Operations," another rehash of WITP, by TSR, after they bought out SPI (you must remember TSR: they started Dungeons and Dragons. Primary protagonist: Jim Dunnigan, mentioned above. Got around, didn't he?).

Anyway, there were many others. Avalon Hill tried a simple version of strategic Pacific war called "Victory in the Pacific" (based on their European theater strategic naval game "War at Sea"). "East Wind Rain." "Carrier War." The list goes on.

On the computer side, Gary Grigsby weighed in in the mid-80s, with "Carrier Force," "Solomons Campaign," "War in the South Pacific," and a few other titles (notably "Bomb Alley," a simulation of naval warfare in the WWII Mediterranean theater that may be the precursor of the third in the UV-WITP-??? trilogy now being developed by 2by3 and Matrix) that used the capabilites of the eight-bit machines of the time to present challenging naval strategic and operational simulations.

"Pacific War" was Grigsby's magnum opus in the late eighties, and it stands, in my mind, as the watershed event in computer wargame simulation, alongside his "War in Russia" simulation, which does as much for land warfare simulation as PacWar does for the naval side. Matrix, in acquiring these and redeveloping them as free offerings to us maniacs who are starved for meaningful simulations, recognized the fact.

Grigsby was, and is, a student of the paper-and-cardboard designs, but his games are similar to them only because of the subject matter, scale, and need to reduce historical data and human endeavor to playability within the chosen motif - here, computer simulation. One of the genius points of Grigsby's designs, as far as I am concerned, is that his games DO NOT mimic print board game simulations. He successfully appreciates the difference between the two media.

Anyone who wants to be completely familiar with the "ins and outs" of these developments would have to sit down and talk with Grigsby about them, of course, but as someone who has derived thousands of hours of entertainment from his computer game designs, I can advise you this:

If Grigsby designed 'em, buy 'em and play 'em.

[CaptDave]

Thanx for the correction and further info. I knew of the board game a couple years before the computer version, so the natural assumption was that computer followed cardboard. Obviously, it was the other way around.

If you've waded through any of my posts in "The Ultimate Wargaming Poll", you've seen me mention the Hundred Years War, an online multi-player game simulating that period of history we don't learn much about in this country. Wanna bet who is one of the developers most responsible for its current level of advancement. Yep, good ol' Jimmy D!

(Since I'm at work, I'm not going to that site right now to look at its full history, but, if anyone's interested, it's at www.hyw.com.)

[VictorH]

Originally posted by CaptDave
Thanx for the correction and further info. I knew of the board game a couple years before the computer version, so the natural assumption was that computer followed cardboard. Obviously, it was the other way around.

If you've waded through any of my posts in "The Ultimate Wargaming Poll", you've seen me mention the Hundred Years War, an online multi-player game simulating that period of history we don't learn much about in this country. Wanna bet who is one of the developers most responsible for its current level of advancement. Yep, good ol' Jimmy D!

(Since I'm at work, I'm not going to that site right now to look at its full history, but, if anyone's interested, it's at www.hyw.com.)

Hi,

Have you played this game online? Are there a lot of players? Is the game worth the money and effort?

[Blackhorse]

Originally posted by VictorH


Hi,

Have you played this game online? Are there a lot of players? Is the game worth the money and effort?

I played HYW on-line for several years when my wife was working overseas -- I highly recommend it (playing the game, that is; *not* sending your wife overseas).

Yes, there are a lot of other players. The quality of each game depends on the mix you get. On occasion there are too many "bombers" and a game degenerates, but as a rule the games are fun, and played in character (every player is a significant noble from that time). Like Pacwar, there is a steep learning curve -- how to manage fiefs, recruit proper bailiffs; increase your stature; when to siege, when to fight, when to flee -- but a tremendous payoff once you learn.

[CaptDave]

I, too, have played this game. In fact, I'm active in a game right now. It's a lot of fun and very educational. The only caveat I have is that you have to have the time available for it. Each turn is one season (3 months), and most of the games have either 4 or 6 turns per week. Because I'm busy with other activities I prefer the games with 2 or 3 turns per week, but then you really run into the problem with people in more convenient time zones lurking to pounce on you after you make your moves.

You can't look at an actual game without registering and paying your fees (monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually), but you can get to the rules and everything to get a feel for it. If you're at all interested, or just curious, go to www.hyw.com to check it out.