CMANO and Harpoon

[stilesw]

nukkxx,

Absolutely correct. It never would run smoothly and was a PITA when it came to crashes and system hangs. After a couple of months you couldn't find it in stores and it went into the (future) Windows 8 dustbin! Maybe my copy is a colletor's item?!

[thewood1]

I still have my Patriot 5" disks. It never worked properly. It got a couple patches and then disappeared.

I can't believe someone would have Command and then go back to Harpoon. One thing I want to point out is how limited Harpoon was on release. It took a while for scenario editing to be legit. It took years for the ability to add battlesets, and even more years to edit the db.

[Gunner98]

collection of Cold War era scenarios

Good number of CW scenarios in the Community Pack, and there is a lot of variety there as well. Some 270 scenarios set between 1950 and 1990, and 71 of them have the word NATO in the description.

Northern Inferno and my Northern Fury series alone give you a good number.

B

[djoos5]

Awesome picture above of the game box! That was one of the sale points for me. I figured if it could model anything like my AH MBT game, then it was going to be awesome. Unfortunately, it was a dud.

Reading the box it says it required the 386. I can't be positive but I might have upgraded machines for this one, too. Talk about always putting the cart before the horse. [:D]

Still have my original Frank Chadwick T2000 RPG game book, too! That was another clunky game system. I remember that they even created a computer-based version of that game.

Anyway - great nostalgia!

[JPV511]

ORIGINAL: stilesw

There is (at least) one other possibility. You might check at www.gog.com. They often have older games that have been updated to run on more modern systems. I've found several there.

I thank you. My wallet...not so much.

ORIGINAL: thewood1

I can't believe someone would have Command and then go back to Harpoon.

If you mean me, it's simply because I don't know any better. As I mentioned, I never got around to playing Harpoon, but I've always wanted to. Since I learned how to play CMANO fairly quickly, I figured I could get into Harpoon just as easily so I purchased Harpoon while it was on sale. I gave it a go but you're right...the interface of Harpoon alone, makes it hard to turn my back on CMANO even for a bit. I do enjoy Harpoon's coms such as "Vampire, vampire, vampire!".

Say, are you the same wood from the Steel Beasts forums?

ORIGINAL: Gunner98

Good number of CW scenarios in the Community Pack, and there is a lot of variety there as well. Some 270 scenarios set between 1950 and 1990, and 71 of them have the word NATO in the description.

Northern Inferno and my Northern Fury series alone give you a good number.

Thanks Gunner98. My preference is for the 1980s era. I have the community 400 pack and Northern Inferno and looking forward to getting into those.

[stilesw]

Got to admit I was somewhat a Harpoon nut before I discovered CMANO:

[VIF2NE]

Нarpoon had its own merits: multi-windowed, difficult weather.

[thewood1]

And Harpoon is completely unsupported. If you look inside Harpoon, you'll find a lot of kludging went into getting things to work. Even the weather effects were never fleshed out completely before real development stopped.

[dmagnusson]

best colection ever

[thewood1]

That is a cool collection. I had all of those in a drawer in a closet and when I moved to a new house, I tossed everything. But the Patriot game was in an old box and made the cut.

[JPV511]

ORIGINAL: stilesw

Got to admit I was somewhat a Harpoon nut before I discovered CMANO:

So I'm guessing you like Harpoon. [;)]

How did the Multimedia Edition compare to previous versions?

[stilesw]

Well, as I recall, the biggest improvement for me was when Harpoon I (Classic '97 I think) was changed to run under Windows 95 instead of DOS. Also, Harpoon II did not seem to be as big a step forward as I had hoped. The "hyped specs" for the Multimedia version are shown in the picture. It included CD ROM support (vs 5.25" and 3.5" floppies) and many more videos and sound clips.

I think they pretty much started to repackage and "enhance" the names to get more sales. Still, all in all, I enjoyed the game/simulation for a long time.

-Wayne

[DavidRob0]

Do you guys remember Patriot? It was a bad attempt at a modern day ground warfare simulation made by Three Sixty.

I certainly remember "Patriot". I think I still have it in a cupboard somewhere. Had a lot of promise, but I found it hard to play, and harder to understand what the game/interface was telling me.

[Sensei.Tokugawa]

Funny thing - my thread form 2 and half years ago where I was seeking advice whether I should include Harpoon UCE in my naval warfare digital studies if I had already had CMANO was one of the two threads summarily closed by the admin here. Now ... this?

[mavfin]

What I remember about the first Harpoon product I had (about 1995-ish?) was that I sent in a bug report, and got a floppy disk in the mail with an updated game engine on it, return address name Don Gilman.

But yeah, Command is way past it. Well, it was originally written in the late 80s. That was coming up on 40 years ago now. I would hope there would be some advances!

I mean, back then, programming a product like this had a LOT of deciding what you could do, and what you simply didn't have RAM/disk space/CPU for. Not so much a problem now, when Command on my hard drive, with extra images, and the Steam community Scenario pack, runs up between 15-20 GB, and even my old desktop has 16 GB of RAM, and a 6-core 2012-vintage Intel Westmere Xeon.

The original computer I ran Harpoon Classic on (and I was way later to the party than Wayne, Gunner, etc) had a 250 MB (not GB) hard drive, and a whole 8 MB of RAM. I had a 32-bit processor at 33 MHz. So, yeah, there's no way the core game could run on a basis to even belong in the same universe with Command. Harpoon was pretty awesome...30 years ago. Oh, and downloading things from the internet was possible, but that was at 28.8K baud, not at the 45 Mbits that I run now on my DSL.

So, it's not that Harpoon was bad...it's just OLD now.

The whole other kerfluffle I won't even mention other than to say that it's just old BS that no one should bother touching. It's like old moldy turds. Do you really want to look or smell any further? They stunk then, and it still does, so just don't bother.

[Dimitris]

ORIGINAL: mavfin
I mean, back then, programming a product like this had a LOT of deciding what you could do, and what you simply didn't have RAM/disk space/CPU for.

This is always the case, even today.

[Primarchx]

I remember buying a copy of the Harpoon boxed wargame in 1988 and saw a flyer in it saying to stand by for the upcoming PC version from 360 Pacific. I was quite poor at the time but had recently bought a 286 PC and started saving my pennies for the actual game. I would troop over to the closest Software Etc every couple of week to see if they had any info on this game. Finally, in 1989, it showed up and I've been hooked on it and its' literal and spiritual descendants ever since.

[thewood1]

I played Harpoon original from the initial release. I gave up on it when the db wars started on Matrix. I kind of kept track of it. But always hoped that Red Pill worked out.

I see people who think Command is just a modern Harpoon. That statement can only be made in ignorance.

[SeaQueen]

Maybe some day we can get them to fund "Command: Supercomputing Edition." LOL!

ORIGINAL: Dimitris
This is always the case, even today.

[Primarchx]

ORIGINAL: SeaQueen

Maybe some day we can get them to fund "Command: Supercomputing Edition." LOL!

ORIGINAL: Dimitris
This is always the case, even today.

I'm pretty impressed on what's shoved under the hood right now. The fact that we have a complete war game that allows you to fight across the entire topographically-represented Planet Earth in real time still blows me away.