Demo Disc
A minute’s silence in memory of the demo disc, if you please. Coup de grâced by broadband, the wafer of wonders* that once clung limpet-like to the front cover of almost every games mag is no more. Denied these monthly…
Category Sims
Dev diaries: the successors to manuals?
Over the past couple of decades numerous words have been written about the disappearance of the lavish printed game manual, but until this Open October submission from Cornerite Tom Goodfellow (aka Wilson) landed on my desk, the idea that we…
Getting started with Grand Prix Legends
Revered race sim Grand Prix Legends turns twenty-five today. To mark the occasion I’m publishing an Open October submission from long-time reader Colonel K. Beyond the break you’ll find the good Colonel’s step-by-step guide to installing, configuring, expanding, and modding…
Medal Magnet: LHX Attack Chopper
The writer of this Open October submission could well be THC’s most decorated reader. Cosstarica got hooked on sims and computer wargames in the Nineties after encountering Panzer General at an IT club. Since then he has not only played…
Boat Crew’s campaign engine is surprisingly sophisticated
Back in the no-risk Noughties, dynamic campaigns stopped traffic and popped monocles in Simulatia and Grognardia. Years passed without a single new example appearing. The “They’re too time-consuming/expensive to make” myth was trotted out so often, some began to treat…
A2Z
A is for Alphabetised wargame, sim, and site news. Now and again, assuming I can persuade Austerity’s Blackburn Cirrus Bombardier engine to perform the miracle of internal combustion, I spend a day or two scouring Simulatia and Grognardia for stories…
Disinterred Devil’s Advocate
I’ve written hundreds of articles during my twenty-odd years as a games inspector. As many of these appeared in the British version of PC Gamer magazine and nowhere else, now and again something from my archive may appear as a…
Road to Glory is great/gratis
In Simulatia, ubiquitous WW2 vehicles like the Sd.Kfz. 250 and the M3 are always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Offerings like Road to Glory that insist you ride a halftrack into battle are almost unheard of.
PicaSim persists
A small band of industrious content creators keeps giving me new reasons to revisit free eleven-year-old R/C flight sim PicaSim. Although the executable has remained unchanged since September 2019, new user-made aerodynes and venues arrive pretty regularly.
Das Football Boot: Season 2
An analogue WW2 U-boat MMO that uses real football results instead of dice, Das Football Boot is capable of producing surprisingly plausible submarine sagas. The catch? Players need to be patient, conscientious, and willing to undertake a little bookkeeping or…
MicroProse multitask like mad
The September/October issue of PC Pilot magazine contains a surprise-studded interview with MicroProse CEO, David Lagettie. Amongst other things, David discloses that Falcon 5.0 is in the planning stage, will “support many aircraft on release, including the F-35”, and won’t…
Train sim tittle-tattle
Scanning the 712 pieces of Train Simulator DLC currently available on Steam you wouldn’t think Dovetail’s aging stalwart had a big following and a burgeoning third-party development scene in India. I’m sure I’m not alone in hoping the likes of…