Post Description

voor de liefhebbers van pure oude nostalgie en submarines in old games :)

688 Attack Sub
Platform: PC
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Year: 1989 

Description
An early submarine game with ten missions which can be played with both American and Soviet attack submarines. The game focuses on realism with several stations the player can use (sonar, weapons, navigation, helm, radio and periscope) but most duties can be delegated to crew members. The graphics are mostly close-up views of the control panels but in some occasions they feature digitized images of surface ships and crew.

At a time when flight and driving simulators were the rage, Electronics Arts put out this product ... 688 Attack Sub - the submarine simulator.

The game was based on the ongoing military conflicts at the time, nearing the end of the Cold War between the United States and the U.S.S.R. You are the commander of the sub, the United States Los Angeles if you chose the American side, or the Soviet Alfa if you choose to fight for the Soviets (just remember that this was back in 1989 - the world was a lot different then ...)

Basically, you are given a choice of missions, each with a specific scenario and set of goals to complete you mission successfully. You are in total control - plotting your course across the map; your sub's speed and depth; your attack, defense and stealth strategies; artillery management; etc.

The graphics, for the period that the game was released, are quite good, and the sounds, although a little muffled if you ask me, are very realistic. And the game play is quite engaging, because depending on the mission you'll find yourself immersed (pardon the pun!) in the action, and having to deal with several matters at once. Picture yourself engaging the enemy's subs, with torpedoes already in the water homing in on you, while your primary target (in this particular case oil tankers) are on the move, and the underwater topography is extremely tricky.

In addition to this, the game has a built-in feature to play against a human player via modem. All in all I found this game to be a lot of fun, especially for a simulation, and I distinctly remember spending hours at a time going at it against the Ruskies!

The only drawback of this game is that, being the ship's commander, you don't get any view/choices about the sub, except those within the sub. Also, with the exception of the periscope view, I find that the graphical representation of targets and the underwater terrain a little simplistic, but it never stopped me from having fun with it!

One word of advice ... Remember that this game was made by an American company during the last days of the Cold War ... You'll find that the US sub has more speed, features and easier maneuvering than its Soviet counterpart.

688 Attack Sub is a submarine simulation game designed by John W. Ratcliff and Paul Grace, published in 1988 for MS-DOS systems and 1990 for Amiga computers by Electronic Arts. A Sega Mega Drive version was also published.

688 Attack Sub is known as an early classic of the genre. John W. Ratcliff followed it up by SSN-21 Seawolf later.

Emulator to install e.g.:
Windows:
DOSBox [Version: 0.73] Size: 1.4M

Thanks to ABBA-DABA :)