The ORIGINAL milsim games and what made them great!

My first off-topic thread! :)

I wanted to make sure that those of us that happened to be lucky enough to know about BI's awesome military games, give remembrance to the great military simulators of the past before we burn our next years playing ArmA 2. I'm positive that some will have their own definitions or opinions about what is deserved to be titled as such, but I would like to share some of my favorite military simulators from the past (that includes infantry type simulation), and I hope you guys have some to share too.

1998 Digital Image Design's Wargasm was my favorite war game for quite some time. Like BI's games, you could play as a grunt, operate tanks, and fly aircraft. For it's time it had great graphics, awesome explosion effects, huge playing field, and most importantly no predetermined path to complete missions. Oh and it had a hot chick with a big gun for the box cover! :D

1993 Electronic Art's Seal Team was my earliest milsim favorite. In this game you couldn't operate tanks or fly harriers, but the terrain was big, there were no boundaries for what path you have to take, and there was big consequences for playing it like traditional FPS games.

1987 Airborne Ranger - Was the first for me, you had to use stealth, tactics, different weapons for different targets, limited ammo etc. etc.

Seal team was the best for me prior to the 2001 Bohemia Interactive game :)

Hidden & Dangerous was my first tactical game. It's annoying as all hell with its bugs and illogical idiocies but there wasn't really anything better at the time.

I can't remember any bugs in H&D, but that's probably because I have my pink glasses on all the time.

Hunter on my old Atari 520st in 1991 was purely awesome.

Huge island, in which you were not limited to a linear gameplay, you could take many kind of ground, sea and air vehicles, and battle the enemy forces.

there is a video on youtube for those that never heard about it :

H&D (another fine product of the Czech Republic), Rainbow Six/Rogue Spear and the Delta Force series (laughably bad at times, but had a load of freedome for it's day)

Yep, HUNTER on the Amiga !!

Awesome

In terms of vehicles and such possibilities one of the earliest games I remember with such scope was Midwinter, not a tactical game but I really loved the open world and vehicles and such :)

And to think.....I was happy playing Wizard 30+ yrs ago.

lol, spent more time typing the game to casette.

But Wizard was hardly a milsim game.

I had an Amstrad CPC464 at that time, the one with the integrated tape reader, not the most evolved one that had a disk reader, how much i hated that tape reader when it utterly crunched the ribbon of some of the tapes ... :D

But Wizard was hardly a milsim game.

I know that, but if I could go back 30 yrs, I could alter the Wizard and the Knights to look like military. And spells could be altered to weapons.

The first shooter 'simulator' (as opposed to flight sim or some other sim) I ever played was 'The Terminator' (1990). It was one of the first if not the first open world shooter games. It had tactical and MP elements, as well as a living world with police and civilians running around a 60 square mile chunk of los angeles.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/terminator

The first tactical shooter game to get me into military sim games and that sort of thing was counter strike. I used to play that back in beta 4. It was the first game I played that brought in an element of realism. It inspired me to seek out more realistic games and to try to figure out through research and that kind of thing what firearms and tactical situations was actually like. I then played Rainbow 6 a bit, and with the special edition of Rogue Spear with the interactive documentary on special operations, tactics, ballistics, terminal effects and what not, my life was pretty much over from there.

Rainbow six for me(yes I am a bit of late comer on FPS), played it since very first one, that's why I am pretty pissed off when ubisoft dumb it down so much.

CS for me have never been a tactical shooter IMO, even worst most people played it would call any rifle made by IA "AWM"

In terms of vehicles and such possibilities one of the earliest games I remember with such scope was Midwinter, not a tactical game but I really loved the open world and vehicles and such :)

Agree. Great game. :)

Mike Singleton is also the creator of the original Carrier Commando and other gems like Lords of Midnight.

Carrier Command you say? That name rings a bell!

... and what made them great!

Too bad. I was hoping to find some gameplay relevant details in here.

So far its just a list of games with hardly any details. :(

I've to correct myself. I double check and Mike Singleton is not the author of Carrier Command.

It seems it's not only my body who's growing old... memory too. :o

My first game that could be called a Milsim was some Helicopter game for Playstation back in the mid-90s. I don't really remember the name but I googled some Helicopter games for PS and the only one that has screens which slightly match with the ones of my memory are those of Thunderstrike 2.

Further than that I also played Rainbow Six etc., not really Milsim but then again it's realistic. And not to forget SWAT 3. Awesome police simulation.

Commando and Ikari Warriors! Cant believe noone said them, coin-op milsims! lol

I'll chip in with M1 Tank Platoon on the Atari

+1 for Hunter and Midwinter

Delta Force 2, It's not really a Mil sim but it does sort of fit in, otherwise, Hidden and Dangerous 2.

Rainbow Six was my first milsim I think.

Jungle Strike might count though. That was first if it does.

Red Storm Rising was a great sim too.

One of the finest tactical subsim ever done despite it is over 20 years old !

Certainly not as realistic as Sonalyst's Dangerous Waters or Sub Command or even i688 Hunter Killer in term of the level of simulation of a modern submarine, but that Microprose game is pure masterpiece.

Dynamic campaign and battles that are really mind challenges in how to attack, how to evade and how to stay as stealth as possible.

The AI is very good at that game and you really need to think ahead of each your moves ... and your next move after launching a torpedo, as you can be sure the enemy sub or surface vessels AI will counter-attack as soon as it has identified your torpedoes and from which direction it comes while trying to evade it and lose it with decoys.

The game even had a replay feature to analyse your latest battle :

It plays with DOSBox perfectly.

The Amiga version featured better graphics than the PC, a remake of the Amiga version is currently in the work

Ah, if we're going submarine sims I have to bring up the original Silent Service - I can't count all the hours I spent glued to my old Atari 800 XL trying to sneak up to convoys and evading destroyers. Also, not to be forgotten: all the old strategy games made by SSI (Vietnam, etc.) - not really simulators, more fancy board games, tho.

Having missed out on Seal Team the first tactical 'military' first person simulation that I played (and that in my eyes actually deserved that name) was actually Rainbow Six in 1998. The first games, not the later instalments of the series. And then quickly came Ghost Recon and Operation Flashpoint in 2001. While GR - somewhat like Rainbow Six with heavier weapons - had very nice but small scale and limited scenarios - OFP really defined the genre for the first time in my eyes.

I think the first milsim game I actually played was called Command HQ. I don't really remember anything about it, only an incling that there was a portion of it that was nuclear war.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/command-hq