Trivia
In the German gaming magazine GameStar (issue 02/2002) Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis was named as "Best Action Game in 2001".
After the success of "Operation Flashpoint", publisher Codemasters bought the rights to the brand name.
That's why the second game of the development team was released under the title "Armed Assault" and "Operation Flashpoint 2" is programmed by a Codemasters team on site in England.
Contributed by
Isdaron 
(695) on Aug 02, 2008.
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.
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.
Operation Flashpoint was a huge success and a big surprise! Just one week after it was online, the demo has been downloaded over a million times!
Contributed by
tarion (137) on Dec 05, 2002.
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.
The editors of Computer Gaming World magazine named 'Operation Flashpoint' Game of The Year for 2001. (April 2002 issue)
A "gold release" has been put out by Codemasters that enhanced the game with a Soviet campaign (named Red Hammer), as well as added additional weapons and vehicles for the original, and patched it to latest version. The "patch" is sold in US stores for about $15.
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.
Contributed by
phlux (4157) on Dec 15, 2001.
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)
The game was reviewed in most European magazines. Here's their verdict.
Germany:
Gamestar: 88%
PC Games: 89%
United Kingdom:
PC Gamer: 89% (Game of the month)
PC Zone: 90% ("PC Zone classic" award)
France:
PC Jeux: 90% "(jeu de mois" award =>game of the month)
Benelux:
PC Zone: 90% ("PC Zone classics" award)
Sweden:
PC Zone: 90% ("PC Zone classics" award)
Finland:
Pelit: 94%
Contributed by
Isdaron (695) on Jul 16, 2001.
