Andrew Fisher (697) on 4/10/2023 11:41 PM · edited · Permalink · Report

It looked pretty technical on the back of the box, but I was probably more open minded at that age and maybe I liked submarines. There was the usual deception of having only the screen shots of the best port, in this case the Atari ST version, DOS was sloppy thirds or forths behind the more colourful, graphical and sonic C64 game, the primary release programmed by the brains behind the game Sid Meier. I don't think this game would have changed the gaming path I was on, I can picture myself taking ages to sink my first ship being quite happy when I did, but I reckon I'd tire of looking at that blue and green chart of the North Pacific and lists of ranks and shipping tonnages. Playing it now I'm glad that the game is plain, statistical and neutral and towards the war, it doesn't have the jingoism and warmongering of the game manual.

Though it didn't covert me, I liked The Ancient Art of War by the Murray Bros. for DOS back in 1990 with its historical battle scenarios, but there was a lot more to that game, for example the battles were spread across history. In Silent Service you could say that the real game is a the sea patrols and the convoy scenarios are more training after you've done the torpedo training back at base, but it seems like after doing one patrol and sinking a respectable tonnage of ships, there's not much point trying another patrol unless you like to pretend you're back in World War II in subs that really existed doing patrols they really did. Actually this got me thinking about the history of games made for war training, which goes back to about the '40s with games like Air Defense Simulation (https://www.mobygames.com/game/198667/air-defense-simulation/) for the US Army. Silent Service certainly had enough seriousness to be of possible use to the US Navy back then, but I think kids found it fun too, the game was part of the British comic strip Computer Warrior, from the revived Eagle comic, where the kid would go into the computer world and play usually C64 games for real and get sent to the "nightmare zone"(basically computer hell) if he lost. So in mid-'86 he played Silent Service over a series of strips and had to complete one patrol circuit aboard the USS Sea Warrior (made up for the game) starting at the Midway Island naval base and sinking a target tonnage of ships to win. Of course the games he played were advertised with price elsewhere in the comic.