1986. Someone at the office had picked up a copy of a new game called Silent Service. Pretty soon he was telling us how this was now the only game he was playing. Not too much later about eight of us were spending our evenings sinking ships in the Pacific. Rather than re-hashing the old debate to decide if Apples were better than Ataris or Commodores, we started discussing Silent Service.
One person found a detailed map of the Pacific. He observed that the depths on the map often corresponded to the depths at the same locations in the game.
1986. Someone at the office had picked up a copy of a new game called Silent Service. Pretty soon he was telling us how this was now the only game he was playing. Not too much later about eight of us were spending our evenings sinking ships in the Pacific. Rather than re-hashing the old debate to decide if Apples were better than Ataris or Commodores, we started discussing Silent Service.
One person found a detailed map of the Pacific. He observed that the depths on the map often corresponded to the depths at the same locations in the game. This brought about a series of technical discussions, trying to figure out how Sid Meier was able to place so much data onto those single sided disks.
Another
coworker came up with some formulas to aim the deck gun at moving targets. This wasn’t too popular – the prevailing feeling was that real submariners sunk ships with torpedoes. The deck gun was for when there were ships afloat but no more torpedoes available.
Yet another member of our group had the goal of making a backup copy of the game. Remember, back in the mid 80’s copy protection was a feature included with almost every game. He finally picked up a copy utility which was advanced enough to copy the game to another disk. Whenever he played on the backup disk his sub was always in shallow water under attack from 6 destroyers.
What we found innovative about the game was the high quality (for 1986) graphics combined with the need for strategy instead of reflexes. The user interface was a pleasure. Rather than memorizing a long list of keyboard commands (which were available) everything centered around the conning tower. With the joystick, the player was able to get to the various functional areas of the submarine.
The game offered a rich set of available options. Scenarios were broken into three types. Practice (which provided about 15 minutes’ of interest), historical convoy based encounters and war patrols. There were also several reality levels to choose from; dud torpedoes, expert destroyers, convoy zigzagging, etc.
Most of us went on war patrols as our favorite scenario type. Because of the randomness, this allowed the most opportunity for discussions at the water cooler. The types of convoys encountered in which area during specific periods of the war. It was a lot of fun to share battle tactics which did and did not work. Helpful to know how the others dealt with destroyers. Sympathy and frustration were shared whenever someone discussed their most recent war patrol which ended with all torpedoes and deck gun shells expended while two merchantmen sailed towards the horizon. No one seemed to discuss the patrols that ended with their submarine sinking – maybe that only happened to me.
Overall, for me this was the first game that demonstrated how much potential the home computer had for game playing.
