Carrier command was a game that was ahead of its time. It combined all of the elements of a strategy game, flight simulator, ship simulator, and first-person action, all in one.
Even though the graphics were quite basic (just non-texture mapped polygons), it never seemed to take away from the gameplay. I remember everything being in 256-colour (or maybe even 16-colour??) and being quite simple, however I think that it enhanced the gameplay, because you were fully focussed on the task at hand, instead of being distracted by detailed graphics.
The action game landed you in the thick of it (and basically saved you about 2 hours of gameplay), but for those of us who are hooked on the Civ's, Warcrafts, Caesars, etc of today (i.e. those of us who enjoy playing the same game for weeks on end), then this game was fantastic to play in strategy mode (i.e. playing the two hours of gameplay that the action mode took away).
You are the captain of a modern aircraft carrier that is fully automated & controlled by you. There was never any indication that there were other crew members on the ship. Even damage repairs were an automated feature carried out by the main computer (according to priorities set by you).
As captain, you flew the jets, piloted the
amphibious assault craft, launched the decoy flares and drones, wire-guided the missiles, steered the ship, decided where to set up the (automated, of course) command centres on each island that you visited, and generally planned your supply route so that you could eventually meet up with the bad-guy aircraft carrier captain & attempt to blow him out of the water.
As I said, this game was quite ahead of its time & I never really found anything like it until about 8 years ago when I discovered the Age of Empires-type strategy games (not similar in gameplay or premise, but similar in being a strategy game, that is).
I have searched the web for years for a downloadable copy for PC. I can't wait to play it again for the first time in about 17 years. I remember that the Amiga 500 had trouble keeping up with the game (probably a memory problem), so it'll be good to play it of a P4 (We've come a long way in computing power, but the old games are still great).
