Matrix Games Forums

Fairly new here, btw. Hello, all.
Has anybody read the book (Tom Clancy)? I'm in the middle of it, and had a random thought: How cool would it be to have a campagin designed around the German and/or Icelandic Battles?

Great Idea - wrong game! This game deals with WWII exclusively. Try over at the Modern Battles forum!

[ April 20, 2001: Message edited by: Paul Vebber ]

ah. Well, SPWAW is the only game of its type (and only game of matrixgames') that I am at all familiar with.

The plan is for SPMW (Modern Wars) to be similar to SPWAW but to accurately portray the capabilities of the more modern units. There's an interesting board for that here also. SP2 was SPI's original attempt to recreate Modern Combat but it was pretty poor compared to SPWAW. I'm confident Matrix will do a much better job. I think (hope) the game is due out by Fall of this year.

It could be an interesting "what if" scenario. What if Hitler had not invaded Russia but concentrated the German forces on defeating England?

Some people like these type of scenarios, but it would take a good bit of work to come up with order-of-battle and maps.

Check out Wild Bill's posts on how to develope you own scenarios and give it a shot.
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"In no other profession are the penalties for employing untrained personnel so appalling or so irrevocable as in the military." -- General Douglas MacArthur

A little off topic but...
Clancy is a great author, check out his latest "The Bear and the Dragon" a nice scenario between Russia and PRC with a little American help.
Also try Larry Bond (eg. "Vortex") he writes in the same style.

There once was a game called Harpoon by Larry Bond....
One of the scenarios included was of this same battle (after all, Tom Clancy was a major backer of the game).

Since Harpoon was a modern naval game, the land warfare was very abstracted...but being an old Navy man myself, I loved the game.

Anyone out there remember this one? It began life as an official training tool for young naval officers. I remember when they installed it on my ship....and since I was a Data Systems Technician, I got to "test" it on numerous occasions.

Bond then converted it to a boardgame in the late 80's (with adjusted stats, of course). Finally, in the early 90's it went to disk (8 of them ) and onto the home computer.

I remember Harpoon and its many variants being an ex-navy type I quite enjoyed it. Maybe someday Harpoon 4 will make it out

Why don't you take a look at Talonsoft's Operation sealion, the expansion for West Front. There are some really good scenarios and campaigns concerning the invasion of Britain and there is a great lot of job put into it. For all you who enjoy WF and EF, try the Operation Sealion as well. Perhaps it is hard to get today but it was also released in a box called Euorope in Flames. That's how came to get it. It includes EF, WF and all their campaign disks.

Originally posted by Flashfyre:
There once was a game called Harpoon by Larry Bond....
One of the scenarios included was of this same battle (after all, Tom Clancy was a major backer of the game).

Also, Larry Bond was an uncredited co-writer of Red Storm Rising, at least according to the forward in the book.

Originally posted by Flashfyre:
There once was a game called Harpoon by Larry Bond....
One of the scenarios included was of this same battle (after all, Tom Clancy was a major backer of the game).

Since Harpoon was a modern naval game, the land warfare was very abstracted...but being an old Navy man myself, I loved the game.

Anyone out there remember this one? It began life as an official training tool for young naval officers. I remember when they installed it on my ship....and since I was a Data Systems Technician, I got to "test" it on numerous occasions.

Bond then converted it to a boardgame in the late 80's (with adjusted stats, of course). Finally, in the early 90's it went to disk (8 of them ) and onto the home computer.

I read on Militarygamer that Harpoon IV is not dead yet! If this is true, then it's well worth the price! Micromanaging large scale actions can drive you mad...

Originally posted by Tiger:
I read on Militarygamer that Harpoon IV is not dead yet! If this is true, then it's well worth the price!

It is true !

.. unless the management/marketing staff at Ubisoft decides otherwise again.

So stay tuned ...

One thing: I wouldn't bet that H4 is as much a 'hardcore game' as Harpoon, Harpoon2, H97 and the other variants.

I suspect it will be a bit more in the line with 'Fleet Command' or -even worse- 'Fighting Steel' (was that the name?).

There's no room for a hardcore-sim nowadays, so that they put it back up into development means most likely that they're going to make it more 'mainstream' I guess .

But maybe (hopefully) I'm all wrong

A.

Originally posted by McGib:
I remember Harpoon and its many variants being an ex-navy type I quite enjoyed it. Maybe someday Harpoon 4 will make it out

I'm not sure if you can buy it anymore, but theunderdogs.org has it available for download:

http://www.theunderdogs.org/game.php?name=Harpoon+1

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Arralen:


I suspect it will be a bit more in the line with 'Fleet Command' or -even worse- 'Fighting Steel' (was that the name?).

Arralen: Fighting Steel sounds like a game I played on the C64 - a VERY primitive precursor to SP Modern Warfare. Still, the only thing available at the time

I understand that Fighting Steel II is also coming out soon. FS is WW2 Naval, but it does sound like it could be about tracked armor. So is there or isn't there going to be a Harpoon IV?

OK, yes I remember that title. The one I played on the C64 was... something, I don't remember the name! The concept was the same as Steel Panthers - similar scale, time period was 1950's to Present, it had a campaign mode. Design your own scenarios, etc. Of course, graphics, sound, AI all stunk compared to SP. But what do you want for 64K of memory??

At this point, there WILL be an H4. SSI was working on it, then got sold by Mattel to UbiSoft. UbiSoft decided to cancel it but the outcry from gamers was strong enough to convince them to resurrect it. Official website at www.harpoon4.com. It's officially, "Larry Bond's Harpoon 4" based on the latest version (#4) of the board game rules. I've heard from some of the beta testers that (under the SSI banner, anyway) it was true to Bond's vision - realism over eyecandy.

We now return to waiting for v5.0 to be posted...

Originally posted by Boz:
OK, yes I remember that title. The one I played on the C64 was... something, I don't remember thename! The concept was the same as Steel Panthers - similar scale, time period was 1950's to Present, it had a campaign mode. Design your own scenarios, etc. Of course, graphics, sound, AI all stunk compared to SP. But what do you want for 64K of memory??

I believe the game you are referring is "Overrun!". Oh, it was FABULOUS! I played that game for hours! Or.... No, "Overrun!" was an Amiga title, it was VERY similar to Steel Panthers in many ways. But it didn't have campaign if I remember correctly.

When I didn't play "Overrun!" I played Red Lightning =). That's one title I would like to see resurrected from the ashes =). And of course, I also player UMS2, or Universal Military Simulator 2. A game of MASSIVE scale! It took over 1 hour for AI to finish it's turn on my poor ol' Amiga 500. and it took even longer for me. That another game I would like to see resurrected. I think my 900Mhz PC is fast enough to handle it =), my Amiga sure wasn't and the PC's of that time weren't much better.