L is for Largely forgotten rally sim. The first video game worthy of the tag ‘simulation’ wasn’t a flight sim but a 2D side-on recreation of the sport that’s currently monopolising the THC idiot box. An attraction at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s annual exhibition in 1958 and 1959, Tennis for Two was played with custom-built controllers and used an oscilloscope for a screen.
F is for Flying pencils added to Scramble. Slitherine’s thoroughly 3D BoB wargame has some Schnellbombers at long last. While the new Do 17s must run the gauntlet of player-controlled Spits and Hurricanes, there’s no danger of them suffering the fate Feldwebel Johannes Petersen’s Do 17 suffered on August 18, 1940. During an attack on Kenley, Petersen’s flying pencil had a fatal encounter with a Z Battery, one of WW2’s most outlandish anti-aircraft weapons.
A is for Affordable angling games. It’s not too late to grab a price-slashed piscatorial plaything on Steam. Ending in approximately seven hours’ time, the emporium’s nearly-over Fishing Fest includes two of my current fishy favourites, Ultimate Fishing Simulator (£2) and Fisher Online (£7), and well-received newcomers such as Cast n Chill – a £10 side-scrolling charmer with fifty catchable species and thirteen stunning backdrops – and Intergalactic Fishing – a £3 top-down curio with innumerable procedurally generated lakes and fish types.
Using the following clues (the map above is purely decorative) in combination with Street View, work out my location.
If you frequent certain forums at Matrix Games, Subsim, and Reddit you may have come across posts written by today’s interviewee, ‘BlindGuyNW’. As his online handle suggests, Zack wargames by ear and touch rather than eye. In many battle sims this approach is simply impractical, but not in all.
This week’s handmade co-op puzzle won’t defox itself. If you’re a dab hand at quizzes, lateral thinking, and search engine sleuthing, why not help out.
Yesterday I ticked another vehicle off my transport bucket list: hovercraft. Inevitably, while being whisked across the Solent by a descendant of Christopher Cockerell’s SR.N1, my mind turned to the question of why these marvelous machines still lack a serious dedicated PC sim.
As strong, original tank sim names are hard to come by nowadays, and many of Spearhead 2’s potential customers probably won’t be old enough to remember that Spearhead 1 wasn’t up to much, perhaps MicroProse’s latest choice of title isn’t as questionable as it first appears.