NATO COMMANDER C64 DISK

NATO COMMANDER C64 DISK

NATO Commander is a war game by MicroProse Software from 1983. As commander-in-chief of the NATO forces, the player needs to try to fend off an invented attack as part of the Warsaw Pact played by the computer. The enemy's superiority in numbers requires the coordination of the available units of standing army and the air force here as well as using the advantageous terrain and the well-aimed use of chemical and nuclear weapons.

The game takes place in real time, whereby five minutes in the game correspond to one second in real time and it can be paused at any time. At the end of each day a status report is shown that summarizes the results of the fights. The situation on the battlefield is evaluated by victory points and triggers in the course of the game a series of events that can be positive or negative for the ongoing war and finally lead to the breakdown of one of the conflicting parties.

The game owns five scenarios with growing complexity and four difficulty grades plus the demonstration mode of the scenario "Battle for Germany". 

The graphics are, as typical for a war game, kept rather somber and consist of a mixture of military symbols and simple icons for units and terrain characteristics as woods, towns or rivers on white background. It is striking that the map appears to be quite compressed and the borders and names of towns are not displayed, which does aggravate the orientation. Depending on the chosen scenario, the map can comprise several screens and can be scrolled by moving the cursor to the border of the screen. The game area itself is divided into invisible hexagons, so that the units can be moved into six directions. Each game area can only keep one unit, and units cannot march through occupied fields. The game has day and night phases: After 22h it gets night and the map is black-shaded until sunrise at 7h.

Fitting the sparse graphics, the sound consists only of two totally different effects: a signal peep for incoming messages and a "buff" sound when attacks take place.

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