How many hours did I spend playing M1 Tank Platoon while I was growing up? Countless. What started with a quick tutorial mission and some quick action play soon became campaign after campaign after campaign of American vs. Soviet tank battles.
Regrettably, this game was never updated from its original version (unless you count the fouled attempt "Across the Rhine" as a sequel). And without a sequel, I've been longing ever since to find a program with the game-play of this game.
The concept is simple.
You control your platoon of four M1 Abrams tanks and other support vehicles. Support vehicles can consist of everything from Bradleys to artillery to A-10 Warthogs. Using an intuitive and interactive map, you can control these units to take tactical control of the battlefield by positioning and manoeuvring around hills, tree lines, and buildings. Though lacking by today's standards, the game does includes elements of weather (clear, rain, snow, and night) that give the scenery its variety.
Within each tank in your platoon, you can position yourself as the driver, gunner, or tank commander (manning a 50-caliber machine gun from the top hatch of the tank). Using the functions keys allows you to easily swap between different positions and tanks as you take
on the enemy. But, as any good strategy/simulation game should allow, you also have the option to fight an entire battle from the map mode. For from the map room, you can move your units around the battlefield and give specific instructions to either entire platoons or individual vehicles.
One of the best surprises to this game was the instruction booklet that came with game. Microprose always did so much research on the vehicles and military units that they attempted to simulate in their games. Much of this research is displayed in the instruction booklet which becomes almost a "Jane's" guide to modern tank warfare. All relevant allied and enemy tank vehicles are given with a brief history of how the vehicle came into being and specifications on what the vehicle is capable of. I would gamble to say that I spent almost as much time reading the instruction booklet as I did playing the game.
