Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis

1001 Video Games

Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Copy protection

Before releasing this game, Codemasters announced that they would be using a new copy protection technology called FADE which should make the game unplayable after a while if run off a copy. It is unknown whether that technology really worked or not as there were many bugs in the game which caused the game to be unplayable even with original CDs.

Demo

Just one week after it was online, the demo has been downloaded over a million times.

Development

Operation Flashpoint survived bouncing between 3 different publishers during its development. Originally the game was to be published by Interactive Magic, then Ubi Soft, and finally Codemasters.

Easter Egg

If the system clock reports a date of December 25, some trees in the game world are replaced by decorated Christmas trees with presents.

Franchise

Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis is the first game in both the Operation Flashpoint series and the ArmA series, and has also been released under the alternate title ArmA: Cold War Assault.

After the success of Operation Flashpoint, publisher Codemasters bought the rights to the brand name. Codemasters and the original developer, Bohemia Interactive, parted ways, and each continued the series on their own, effectively forking the game into completely separate, independent series. Codemasters continued the Operation Flashpoint series with its own development team on-site in England, while Bohemia Interactive continued its take on the series under the ArmA name.

Military

Operation Flashpoint was regarded to be so accurate that its developers produced the Virtual Battlespace Systems 1 (VBS1) - a version of the Operation Flashpoint engine for use by the military for training purposes. The first military customer for VBS1 was the United States Marine Corps. Its users today include the defence forces of Australia, Canada, Israel, New Zealand, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.

References

Codemasters has confessed that many of the characters within Operation Flashpoint are based on personnel within the company. The firm's chairman Jim Darling, for example, appears within the game as the evil General Vasilli, while Codemasters' UK MP James Plaskitt also makes an appearance. (Source: MCV, Friday, July 20 2001)

Scenario

The islands featured in the game are based on real world locations. A forum competition was held to discover if anyone could figure out the exact locations.

Awards

• Computer Gaming World
  • April 2002 (Issue #213) – Game of the Year
• GameSpy
  • 2001 – PC Action Game of the Year
• GameStar (Germany)
  • Issue 02/2002 - Best Action Game in 2001

Information also contributed by Clive Lindop, Entorphane, Felix Knoke, Macintrash, phlux, rstevenson and Sabri Zain