GATO
Description official description
GATO is a real-time 3D submarine simulation game, where the player is a commander of a United States submarine in the Pacific Ocean during World War II against Japanese warships. Gameplay consists of missions where the primary directive is to navigate the submarine to track and intercept (multiple) enemy warships (patrol boats, destroyers, etc.) on the randomly created map (which consists of randomly placed islands) and close in for the kill with torpedoes.
Combat itself consists of a direct visual of enemy ships (via periscope) and firing torpedoes at the correct angle to ultimately sink the ship. Be warned that although the player has the element of surprise of a submerged vessel, enemy ships will return fire. When all hell breaks loose, a disclosed submarine is a sitting duck to Japanese guns. Be prepared to direct the damage control team to fix up the damaged submarine when under fire. The mission ends when the player has successfully eliminated all targets on the map.
Groups +
Screenshots
Promos
Credits (DOS version)
| By | |
| Special Thanks to Retired Captain (US Navy) |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 15% (based on 2 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.3 out of 5 (based on 26 ratings with 2 reviews)
The Good
It gave me something to do besides homework. Of course, I did enjoy sinking ships, which was fun to do when you are 14.
The Bad
The lack of AI. I quickly figured out an easy strategy for sinking ships. I'd run around, making as much noise as possible to attract the destroyers. Once I knew they were in-bound, I'd release a ton of mines as I submerged, then I waited. Given a few minutes and I had sank the entire escort force. Finding and sinking merchant ships after that was easy. Also, rescuing pilots was a very boring effort. It was a lot like trolling for fish, wandering around until the computer decided you found him.
The Bottom Line
It's a very simplistic submarine game played in a WWII environment. It is essentially you against the Japanese Navy and Merchant Fleet. The only ally you have is the sub tender who'll come out and give you more fuel and ammunition. There is no resemblance between the map you work with and the real world, just a bunch of islands for you to navigate around.
DOS · by Spectre (126) · 2000
I like this one even better than "Silent Service" or "Das Boot"...
The Good
It's fun. The missions are diverse (intercept a convoy, rescue a parachuter, destroy a target, etc). The gameplay is easy enough to be fun without having to consult a 500 page manual every few seconds but has all the necessary elements to make it realistic. And your log - you save your log with a list of all of the Japanese ships you've sunk including their tonnage etc. I still enjoy this game today! The atmosphere was sooo cool for the time being.
The Bad
Well, graphics and sound don't match up today. And the game will get repetitive - there's only one island chain and the same (although diverse) missions all over again. I would have really liked a storyline-based campaign mode or a mission- and scenario add on.
The Bottom Line
Good luck finding it anywhere, but if you do odds are you'll enjoy it. I did, and I usually hate simulators with a passion.
DOS · by Gothicgene (66) · 2001
Discussion
| Subject | By | Date |
|---|---|---|
| manual or quick-reference card? | John Flora | Jan 9, 2015 |
Trivia
Cancelled ports
A port to the 7800 system was evaluated by Atari, and several prototypes have been found, though they show only a series of still renditions of various screens in the game.
Macintosh version
While the original GATO was written in BASIC for DOS computers, the Macintosh version was written from scratch in C and designed from scratch to take advantage of the Macintosh user interface. The authors of the Mac version (Bill Scott, James Rhodes and Sean Hill) used MacPaint to create all of the game graphics and MacDraw to generate the ship shapes.
Morse
The highest difficulty levels of the game cause the opening mission briefing to be rendered *only* as Morse Code, forcing the player to decode it himself in real-time.
Speed
The DOS version features a Run Speed parameter which you can change to run the game at "0", or 8088 speed, "1", or Compaq Deskpro speed (80286), or "2.5" (PCAT and AT&T 8086).
Technology
GATO was written in basic and compiled to an executable. You can tell this because all of the sprites used in the game are flashed onto the screen in a rapid order before the game starts. This is common in basic games that use PUT and GET commands for sprite manipulation. Each sprite has to be on the screen and then GETed into a data array before it can be referenced as a sprite later on in the game.
The sprites were stored as a series of relative directions -- up two pixels, left 7 pixels, draw filled circle at x,y, etc. -- so they took up less space. So they had to be drawn as well as GET'd. Another way to verify if a game was compiled BASIC was to search for BASIC keywords and errors; the string "RETURN without GOSUB" was found in GATO.EXE)
Title
Gato is a class of the US "fleet" type long-range recon submarines. The most famous of which (in real life) is USS Wahoo.
Information also contributed by Игги Друге, Bill Scott, jeff leyda, Kasey Chang and WizardX
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Related Sites +
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Byte Cellar: Of AJAX, GATO and Bill Scott
Interview with the programmer of the Macintosh version.
Identifiers +
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Raphael.
Atari ST added by Corn Popper. Apple II added by ClydeFrog. Atari 8-bit added by Kabushi. Macintosh added by Martin Smith. Commodore 64 added by UsagiPretzels.
Additional contributors: Martin Smith, formercontrib, Patrick Bregger.
Game added August 19, 1999. Last modified April 7, 2024.