Carriers at War: Map Screen

And here’s the Task Group management screen.

Carriers at War: Task Group screen

The Matrix verison has an updated interface that fans of the old game will appreciate – for instance, use a mouse wheel to control the game clock. Mouse wheels didn’t exist in 1991. The graphics are updated as well as are the animated overhead battle scenes. It’s not 3D polygonic but it’s a colorful way of communicating your hits. 

The game is stable under Vista except for one recurring spot. Be sure to save your game before adding US torpedo bombers to a coordinated strike. We had it crash there multiple times.

One flaw in the original that was not updated is the inexplicable lack of randomized start, especially with the Midway scenario. There are however, 38 different mystery variants of the Coral Sea situation. Run through them in order then start again. By the time you get around to the first one you’ll probably forget. That may be random enough.

There’s also multiplayer, which I’m pretty sure was not in the original game.

And  there is no campaign game. You can’t fight the whole war. There was only one carrier game that had that, Carrier Strike, and it didn’t do it too well. But at least it tried. That game had other problems.

But the day of the pure carrier game may be over. Maybe we can get ahold of one of those recent Pacific strategy games. We’ll see.