Red Storm Rising (1987)
Before Tom Clancy became a weapons expert, political analyst, TV mogul, and a veritable network unto himself, he was just a storyteller - one talented enough to transform the arcane sensibilities of modern warfare into something fascinating for the average Joe. And while Clancy never became a hard-core gamer, Tom liked games; in particular, he liked the idea of turning his novels into games, for which the combat-rich Red Storm Rising novel was perfectly suited.
Design: Sid Meier and
Arnold Hendrick
Publisher: MicroProse
Genre: Simulation
Difficulty: Intermediate to Advanced
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In 1985, TSR (the Dungeons & Dragons folks) sold some 60,000 copies of a Red Storm Rising board game (which is still worth picking up, if you're interested) based on a land conflict between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces in Europe. So, when MicroProse signed the contract with Clancy for a computer title, Sid wanted to do something different: a modern naval game.
 | "Red Storm Rising amazed me in that it went too far in the sim obscurity direction...I gave people a lot of credit for getting it...."
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In Red Storm Rising, you portray a submarine captain, but all of the cozy arcade accouterments from Sid's earlier Silent Service are replaced by a gritty techno-realistic look. The game is played over a series of multiple sonar arrays, together with torpedo tracking and threat displays - enough grids to make you swear off graph paper forever - but it also offers plenty of eye candy, in the form of sinking ships and missile launches, to keep you coming back for more. The missions are the most varied of all Sid Meier sims: You stalk Soviet ICBM subs under the Arctic ice cap; stop your enemy from landing commando forces in Iceland; slip just offshore of the Karelian peninsula and level a land base with Tomahawk missiles; even get into "knife fights" with hunter-killer submarines.
Tom Clancy is so expensive now as to render the question of a Red Storm Rising II moot, which is a real shame. More recent submarine simulations, such as SSI's Silent Hunter, may offer more photo-realistic instrument displays, but nothing can quite capture the feel of involvement and psychological realism found in Red Storm Rising.
Each time Red Storm Rising was ported to another platform, it was tweaked to take advantage of each platform's strengths. If you use headphones when playing the Amiga version, for example, the sound quality is such that you learn to identify enemy vessels by their unique propeller noises - you feel almost like a real sonar operator! And as you win or lose missions, the fate of the free world hangs in the balance. A bit melodramatic? Perhaps, but it's a wonderful way to design a game.
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