Sea Battle

"Extremely innovative for its time. This game is arguably one of the forefathers of modern strategy/war sim games."

Here is one game that used the ability to make a controller overlay to its fullest extent. You can't play without it at all (unless you're reeeeeeeealy good at memorization)! Sea Battle allows you to create a huge fleet of sea vessels which you use to defend your base and take over the enemy's. You and a friend (or many friends) will enjoy this game for quite a long time!

Story: N/A
Sea base versus sea base. Want more? Use your imagination. :P

Gameplay: 9
This game has such a surprising amount of depth for an old game that you'll be amazed. When the game begins, one player's base will be at one corner and the other player's base will be at the other. Each player has the ability to create a limited amount of sea vessels. The vessels they can choose from all have different levels of strength, speed, range and armor. You can choose from battleships, destroyers, submarines and many more. You must leave some of your vessels in your base for defense, because all your opponent has to do is sail a vessel in your base to win.

To discern your vessels from each other, they are all differently colored. If one of your vessels and one of your opponent's collide on the map, the map zooms in to exactly where they are. You heard me right, if you are both out in the open sea you will fight in the open sea; if you are both near a cluster of islands then you fight using islands as cover. Here is where we see the strong strategy element. Even though the play becomes more action oriented when the map zooms in, just because you have the most strength or armor doesn't mean you'll win. You'll be hard pressed to do damage to a vessel that can weave through land like a piece of cake.

In action mode, you have a crosshair. This means you can move one way and shoot another way. Make use of this realistic feature; it will come in very handy. You can't make the screen scroll or run away once action mode starts, so it's a fight to the death!

The only flaw in the gameplay aspect of this title is that there is no one player mode where you fight the computer. Even if the AI was very rudimentary, it would have given one player the ability to hone their skills (it's very tedious playing both players, believe me I've tried :) ).

Graphics: 8
The long range map doesn't have very good graphics, but the way the system enlarges the terrain around you when it zooms in is pretty impressive. Don't misinterpret me, there's nothing close to Mode 7 effects in this game, but when the screen changes you are exactly where you were on the long range map. In action mode, all vessels look like they're supposed to (e.g. a battleship resembles a battleship very accurately).

Sound/Music: 3
Not very good. The long range map sound is supposed to be the sound a sub makes (I'm guessing). It becomes very annoying after a while and both you and your opponent may want to enter battle mode just to make the sound stop for a while. Shooting sound and explosion sounds are fine. There's a small victory fanfare when someone wins, but it's nothing special at all.

Control: 8
Mostly good, but to create your vessels you have to enter the code (e.g. press Create, Destroyer, Deploy) correctly or you have to start all over again. It will most likely be confusing at first, but you'll get the hang of it. Cycling through your vessels to pick which one to move is also tedious, but at least your opponent has to do the same thing with his ships.

Replay Value: 8
There are so many ways you can create/use your fleet, it will take a long time to discover them all. This is a great game to play when more than two people are over. If there's four people, two people can play and the other two can each help one player strategize.

Bottom Line?
This is one game that is extremely worthy of being recreated by the Blue Sky Rangers. This game set the standard for strategy/war sim games on the NES, SMS and other 8 bit systems that came after the Intellivision and 2600. This game set such a high standard that it in and of itself is a fun, involving strategy game that still has play value even today, which is why I give it a 9.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/21/01, Updated 09/21/01