Military Madness Review
Sixteen years after its initial release, Military Madness is as deeply strategic and engaging as it ever was.
The Good
- Challenging AI
- Varied units
- Strategic play
- Original graphics and sound.
The Bad
- Music loops awkwardly
- No two-player support.
Military Madness originally debuted on the TurboGrafx-16 in 1989, where it became one of the founding fathers of the turn-based strategy genre on consoles. In the game, you control a variety of military units, which you must guide over hostile lunar terrain. You'll have to take into consideration how the topographical features of the battlefield affect unit performance so you can adjust your tactics accordingly. Sixteen years after its initial release, Military Madness is as deeply strategic and engaging as it ever was, thanks to the porting skills of Flying Tiger and Hudson.
Military Madness is an allegory of war in which a 22nd-century Axis has taken over the moon. As the leader of the Allied forces, you must recapture control of the moon, which has proven an invaluable mining resource and is vital to the survival of Earth. To make things worse, the Axis has devised a weapon capable of destroying all planetside life. So it's up to you to prevent its use.
Fortunately, you've been equipped with futuristic aerial and ground units, each of which performs differently against other types of troops and vehicles. It's important to allocate some of these to base defense while placing others on the attack. If you, for example, cloister a tank within your base, it will gain a tremendous territory advantage and will likely be capable of repelling large siege squads.
Each time a unit is successful in battle, it gains decoration that increases its combat effectiveness. For this reason, it's in your interest to dispatch your foes in as few turns as possible, lest they gain veteran status, thus becoming more difficult to kill. Fully decorated units are 200 percent more powerful. Sometimes, you'll work your opponent down to his last man, only to have your own troops whittled away by that one ineradicable tank or company.
Although you'll execute all commands on a world map--an overhead view of the moon--confrontations with the enemy are shown in profile, and with greater detail. This isn't the best-looking game you've ever seen on an LG VX7000, but that's kind of the point. The game looks exactly as it did on the TurboGrafx-16, so it's just as nostalgia-inspiring as it should be.
The sound is equally evocative of your original Military Madness experience. Familiar tunes play for the Allies and Axis turns, although these loop a bit off the beat. The music stops (often dramatically) when a battle breaks out, making way for a single explosive sound effect.
Military Madness is a great port of a seminal turn-based strategy game. You can see the game's influence everywhere, from tactical role-playing games, like the Game Boy Advance's Zone of the Enders: The Fist of Mars, to traditional turn-based strategy games, like Advance Wars (also on the GBA). This game's only real pitfall is its lack of two-player support, which is a no-brainer in a turn-based game. However, if you liked the original, or any of its spiritual descendants, you won't be disappointed with the mobile Military Madness.
- GameSpot Scoregreat
Player Reviews
Critic Scores
- Hudson Entertainment
- Flying Tiger
- Wargame
- Release: Apr 19, 2005
- ESRB: Everyone
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