Matrix Games Forums

Oops. I see that I inadvertently said "SSI" when I meant "SSG." My apologies to Msrs. Billings and Grigsby. (But I did have fun with a lot of the SSI stuff, too, especially the Panzer General series.) SSG put out some great games.

actually some of the games on that list I do not own, but may have either played, or even games that I intend to purchase eventually because they look appealing to me and they are a reasonable price.

As for the "aggregate of crappy games" some of the games on my list should appeal to anyone in this forum because it is a pretty diverse representation of different wargames. Sure the cost of all the games on my list adds up to be around 400 dollars, but that 400 adds up to quite a large variety of game types and subjects.

Seventy dollars is nearly 25 percent of the entire budget for all the games on my list.

smart shopper? I don't know, I just buy games that interest me and War in the Pacific is one of them. I'm sorry, but I've never seen that price on a PC game in all the years I've been playing (about four years).

I hope people do purchase War in the Pacific, because I want to see games of this quality continue to reach the market. I do still feel that the price is overly inflated, considering the Combat Mission bundle including both Beyond Overlord and Barb to Berlin is selling for the same price.

Mailer

Regarding the Agragate of Crap.

You don't even like the combat mission series?

I think they are really good. What other games on my list do you not like? I may agree with you on some of them, but I'm surprised to hear that you don't like a single one.

Not even the Operational Art of War?

Not looking for a flame fight, just bouncing around a freindly thread.

Mailer

Originally posted by Mailer22
Regarding the Agragate of Crap.

You don't even like the combat mission series?

I think they are really good. What other games on my list do you not like? I may agree with you on some of them, but I'm surprised to hear that you don't like a single one.

Not even the Operational Art of War?

Not looking for a flame fight, just bouncing around a freindly thread.

Mailer

No flame intended, none taken, my friend. I think that your experience has been a lot like mine, spending hundreds of dollars on stuff that is mostly disappointing in your quest (sorry, I'm an artsy-fartsy kind of guy who uses words like "quest") for entertainment.

You're right. I have bought and played many of the games on your list. I hated them all. They impressed me as the design efforts of people trying to make a living as computer wargame designers who had no idea of what simulation gaming was (or what it ought to become).

Plain fact is that I'm an old-time, board-style wargamer who holds computer games in contempt until they prove their worth. There are not more than half a dozen computer wargames that have ever commanded my attention, and most of those are so old that today's computers won't even run them. For example, I have a C-64 and Grigsby's "War in the South Pacific" game I wouldn't trade for anything. It's silly, it's simple, it's goofy, but it's still better than anything that has come out since, including (yes, I know I'm treading on sacred ground) Uncommon Valor.

The best computer wargame of all time? I say "Pacific War," in its last SSI incarnation. WITP promises to be better. If it is no better than UV was by comparison to WITSP, I'll still be screwing around with my old obsolescent games, not playing the new obsolescent games...

Pasternakski, I find myself agreeing with you quite often. As I play "Uncommon Valor" I still find myself pining for the old C-64 "War in the South Pacific," by Gary Grigsby, or even CAW by Billings. Those were great, at least for the time, weren't they?

And I, too, started out on boardgames many decades ago, when Avalon Hill was King. Remember AH's "Midway"? My son, who's doing quite well in the military now, showed his mettle by kicking his Old Man's *** on the AH boardgame "Third Reich" when he was about twelve. ("Third Reich" translated to a computer game far less successfully than "Uncommon Valor" though the latter, too, has its frustrations -- hopefully to be corrected in "WitP.")

But there have been some great computer games that relieved us of having to roll the dice and carefully pick up and move those stacks of little cardboard square unit markers, let alone constantly check the rule book and argue over interpretations. Computers also allowed fog of war, lacking in the board games.

Do you remember the gigantic AH D-Day game that had an immense board and several hundreds of markers? Took up half my living room. I used an early data base progam on my C-64 to keep track of the units. On the other hand, there were some early computer Civil War games, Gettysburg and Antietam in particular (though I don't recall who made them), that were excellent, if very slow.

I've never run across "Pacific War," however. There was, as I recall, a freeware or shareware "Matrix Project: Pacific War" that I downloaded, but I couldn't get it to run on my machine. Is that what you're referring to? I haven't seen an SSI version -- perhaps you can point me to it.

One last comment: Re. "Sub Command": Perhaps why it's so cheap is that it includes games put out more than five years ago, such as "668(I)," which Jane's first put out. "688(I)" was a good sim; I worked with a temporarily-beached-for-school submariner here in Honolulu who recommended it, and he said it's about as real as being in an LA-class sub itself. He said many of the guys on his sub played that game. So I wouldn't call that a "crappy game."
And I agree with Mailer22 that the latest "Combat Mission" games are quite good, assuming we're both talking about CMBO and CMBB.

But if WITP is not good, then shame on Matrix. -Ron Amerine

How 'bout it Alpha testers? Worth the price? -Byron13


If I weren't receiving a free copy of the game for being a tester, I can honestly say I would spend $150 for this game. That's having played it.


Ron - I still have my AH copy of Midway, and even have the Coral Sea Variant set from a copy of the General. Great Game.

P.S. People from Hawaii aren't allowed to complain about anything

Brings back memories, doesn't it, Ron? Yep, the old Avalon Hill monster D-Day game, "The Longest Day," is set up on the gaming table in my library even as we speak. A fellow geezer and I have been playing the campaign scenario for over three months (not constantly, of course, but when we get together).

"Pacific War" by Grigsby was first published in 1992 by SSI. I still have it. It was on 3 1/2" floppy disk. There have been revisions since, with the first Matrix version, as I recall, being 2.3. Matrix released 3.0, then patch 3.1 as free games (they are available on this site in the "downloads" section, but a lot of people have trouble downloading them, apparently due to an ISP upgrade problem that is explained over there). I continue to play v. 2.2, which I think to have been the best version and am anxiously awaiting the fruits of Jeremy Pritchard's labors, which will be v. 3.2.

There is a Web site somewhere that still has the pre-Matrix Pacific War available for download, but I don't remember the URL anymore. I think that an advanced Yahoo search for the terms "Grigsby Pacific War" leads you to it, but I haven't looked for a long time.

Game on, partner. It looks like your tastes are a little broader than mine in computer wargames. Beyond that, I think we see things pretty much the same way (except I would pay more than 70 bucks for WITP based on the subject matter and designer alone).

Hi, I think the pre Matrix (SSI) Pacwar can be found at
WWW.the-underdogs.com

Originally posted by Mogami
Hi, I think the pre Matrix (SSI) Pacwar can be found at
WWW.the-underdogs.com

Ah, just like the skunk standing downwind from itself said, "It all comes back to me now." Thanks, Mog. The correct link is www.the-underdogs.org. You can get the pre-Matrix WIR there too, if you want it. The Pacific War manual is available in PDF form. You have to go to the alphabetical listing of games under the letter "G," because these games are, for whatever reason, included as "Gary Grigsby's Pacific War" and "Gary Grigsby's War in Russia.

This is a great site, by the way. Everything is free (you have to endure a lot of annoying popups), and there are a lot of excellent old games available. The guy who runs the site lives in Bangkok.

Hi,

This link should work for "Underdogs". (FYI Mogami - it's .org rather than .com)

http://www.the-underdogs.org/


Edit - Pasternakski wins by a nose!

Thanks much to all of you. You are right, Snigbert -- "Lucky you live Hawai'i" is a common phrase here. But it did get down into the mid '60's here last night. Brrrrrrr.

Boris, or, uh, Pasternakski: I'd like to know how to get ahold of Jeremy Pritchard's v.3.2 of Pacific War when it comes out. Are you playing that v.2.2 off of floppy, or did it go CD?

Wasn't Billings' and Grigsby's original outfit called SSG? But SSI first released Pacific War? I'm getting confused....

Thanks again for the responses and info.

Aloha.

Originally posted by Ron Amerine
But it did get down into the mid '60's here last night. Brrrrrrr.

Pussy! The overnight low down here in Melbourne was 32.5 degrees Celsius Thats 90.5 degrees Fahrenheit in your scale;)

LOL, Raverdave. But it's summer Down Under right now, isn't it? What kind of lows do you have in your winter?

BTW, Snigbert: Really good news that you find WITP to be a great game. I'm ready! Just for curiousity's sake, do they seem to have taken into account any of the feedback from this UV forum?

I'm blown away that you have the original AH Midway plus The General's mod. My older brother has a garage full of games going back to the '50's that he's hung onto, along with his The General magazines. (His son-in-law attends yearly that grognards' marathon in Las Vegas.) Being the younger, of course I was always the Germans, Japanese, Confederates, North Koreans and Communist Chinese. I'm grateful to the computer AI for allowing me to try out the "good guys" side finally.

Didn't realize when I started on this forum about a month ago that I'd meet so many people of my generation and background -- although I've never been anywhere near as accomplished a wargamer as many of you are. I was beginning to think that real-time and first-person-shooter games had squeezed out turn-based strategy games. UV has allowed me to put my "Empire Earth" back on the closet shelf, and WITP promises to keep it there.

The designers frequently check these boards and take down suggestions from players. Whether they will implement suggestions depends on a number of factors such as how good of an idea it is, how much work it will require, game balance, etc. I can say that the new things they have added so far seem to be based on requests of players/testers, and are really going to add to the playability of this huge game.

I'm not sure if we're the same generation Ron, I'm only 28. However, my dad got me started on Avalon Hill at a very young age. I'll have to remember to thank him for that one of these days.

Originally posted by Ron Amerine
Boris, or, uh, Pasternakski: I'd like to know how to get ahold of Jeremy Pritchard's v.3.2 of Pacific War when it comes out. Are you playing that v.2.2 off of floppy, or did it go CD?

Wasn't Billings' and Grigsby's original outfit called SSG? But SSI first released Pacific War? I'm getting confused....

Thanks again for the responses and info.

Aloha.

We Californicators are thinking about cutting Los Angeles loose and letting it float out into the Pacific ... so look out, Ron, fifteen million terminally weird people may be headed your way just about any time now ...

PW 3.2 will be in the free downloads section of this Web site. I have the floppies for the old, original PW and downloaded v. 2.2 from the Underdogs Web site we were talking about earlier (the link is posted there). There was never a CD. Matrix did a v. 2.3 that no longer exists AFAIK, then v. 3.0 followed by a 3.1 patch. 3.0 and 3.1 are still available in the downloads section.

SSI was the 1,000-pound gorilla of computer wargaming from the mid-eighties to the mid-nineties and is still around in a less "grognard" mode. SSG, or Strategic Studies Group, is also still around. It is an Australian company started by Roger Keating and Ian Trout back in the eighties. They published some good stuff, for example the old classics "Reach for the Stars" and "Carriers at War." I used to play their Civil War battles series, which wasn't bad, but not much more than introductory games.

BTW, there's a guy named Rich who has a Pacific War fan page that has some pretty interesting stuff on it (he doesn't appear to have done anything with it since May '02, though). The link is below.

http://home.earthlink.net/~tmflood/page2.html

Hi, I think Rich has been busy. (Rich Dionne did the Data Base OB's and scenarios for UV and is doing the same for WITP)

Originally posted by Mogami
Hi, I think Rich has been busy. (Rich Dionne did the Data Base OB's and scenarios for UV and is doing the same for WITP)

Sonofagun. I never looked close enough to notice that this was Rich Dionne's page. It's a small world after all...

Thanks, Pasternakski. I was mixing up Keating and Trout with Grigsby and Billings. Was Billings part of SSG's CAW and Battle of
Britain, though? Or am I mixing up Billings with Keating?

BTW, I was brought up around LA (SG Valley) and gladly escaped to Paradise 29 years ago. Please don't let LA float our way. Send it toward Australia so Raverdave can experience some smog.

Thanks, Snigbert, for your reply, too. Glad there are real classical wargamers among the younger generation. My son, as I've mentioned, was brought up on AH and then SSG and SSI, et al, but has moved over to the real-time stuff, and particularly first-person-shooters. He had some link to that new US Army game.

Enjoy the Super Bowl.

The thing that is difficult about being an old-school board gamer is finding opponents. I have lots of old AH games (Midway, D-Day, Flat Top, Stalingrad, Afrika Korps, War at Sea, Bismarck, Victory in the Pacific, Battle of the Bulge, Guadalcanal, etc) but they are sitting on a shelf collecting dust because I haven't found another gamer other than my dad. Unfortunately my dad doesn't play anymore because he has PTSD from Vietnam and military things like that bother him these days.