Warning, I have Military Madness

20 January 2009 11 Comments

Next to fighting and arcade games, strategy games are probably the ones I enjoy the most. I’ve played my share of strategy war games over the years and remember the seemingly endless Starcraft games through high school and into college. But before I was leading Zerg hordes to victory, I was playing a different strategy game that has seemingly all but been forgotten - turn-based war games.

The first turn-based strategy (TBS) game I had and played was The Perfect General II way back when we were all still running DOS and floppy disks. It was a WWII themed war game where you place you tanks, infantry and so on - then you wait for your opponent to go, and repeat. The thought behind a TBS compared to a real-time strategy (RTS) game you’d think would be the same, but it’s a completely different horse…and one I like to ride.

I discovered Military Madness, an old TurboGrafix 16 game that topped many of the lists when I searched for “best games” for the console. So with my Wii Homebrew fired up and ready to go, I gave Military Madness a go. At first I wasn’t too impressed but I quickly got into the game as I found out just how much thought you can put in to it.

anim_military_madness Since you’re in no rush to make your move, unlike RTS games, you can actually plan your strategy based on the units you have. However, in this TBS game at least, you don’t have resources to worry about. No gold to harvest or homes to build. You have 10 units, use them wisely. Of course each unit has it’s strengths and weaknesses. But there are many subtleties to the game that make you careful about each move, like combining units to increase attack and how terrain effects defense. It took me a while to catch on, but after you watch the computer beat you once or twice, you’ll see where you need to improve. One thing to note is that each map is not balanced. One player will start with more than the other, an attacker and defender, if you will, but depending on how you play that can change very quickly.

And this being an old 16-bit game, it’s safe to say this game isn’t winning any graphic awards, even for its time. But the graphics do their job as the game really is more about simple dice rolling than it is how things look on screen. The one true annoyance in the game is screen size. Some of the bigger game maps take up two or three screens and there’s not such thing as a “soft” scrolling. I’m not entirely sure how many different units types there are, but the computer is very tricky and very hard to beat after about the third campaign. You really have to know your units and what each of them can do. I’m at a point where I’m about ready to make a cheat sheet of units so I don’t have to use the in-game guide to tell me which units can hit air targets and which ones can’t.

The controls are a little wonky as the game plays on a hex-based grid, but otherwise the game is speedy and simple. I enjoy not having to worry about rebuilding my army or worrying about resources. One thing that really turned me off of RTSes was building up my army, sending them in to fight, and then having to rebuild it every 20 minutes. It just got exhausting. Maybe I’m just not a fast enough thinker, but the TBS games seem to get you into the action a lot quicker than RTSes, a true benefit.

I haven’t tried Military Madness with a human player as of yet. The wife gave it a go but didn’t like it so much. I think she’s happy with Starcraft. Even with that, I can see little Brian back in 1989 partaking in all-night Military Madness matches as I would Starcraft matches. While it did relatively poor in the United States, I still think the TG16 has some of the best “gems” of the 8/16-bit era.

And if you don’t have Wii Homebrew setup then Military Madness seems to be available as a Virtual Console title. Or you can always find a emulator for your computer and try it that way, eitherway, if war games are your bag then Military Madness should be one to try out. I may try to find Perfect General II somewhere and try it again, maybe I’ll like it more now.

11 Comments »

Thee said:

“Zerg hordes to victory” Ha!

# 20 January 2009 at 10:48 pm

Renee said:

My favorite of the war games are the Advanced Wars series on Nintendo Gameboy Advance and the DS. They are turn based and have all sorts of different units and maps. The story changes with every game, as does the game play. My favorite one was on on the Gameboy Advance, where your COs had basically a super power they could use on the enemy (like covering the map with snow and lowering visibility). None of the other games have had that, though. But they are still fun!

I never got to play Starcraft when it was at it’s height. Shame. I’m pretty sure I would have loved it.

# 21 January 2009 at 8:24 am

Brian said:

I totally forgot about Advance Wars! I have that for my DS and remembering trying it and giving up on it. But now that I’m on a turn-based kick I should give it another go - might be more fun this time.

That is shameful you never really played Starcraft. It actually still plays well on XP and lots of people still play on-line. It has its limits, but on today’s computers it sure is fast!

# 21 January 2009 at 9:51 am

Brian said:

I went back to play Advance Wars and now it’s really good! Go figure! I actually got the first DS AW (Dual Strike) and like it far better than the Days of Ruin sequel. Good call, Renee!

# 22 January 2009 at 9:47 am

Renee said:

I agree on the Dual Strike vs. Days of Ruin. I was really disappointed in that one. I don’t think I even bothered to finish it. I’m just glad I found someone else that likes those games. I’ve always been alone with those games and never got to really use the 2 player functions.

# 22 January 2009 at 10:00 am

Brian said:

Yeah, seems I’m alone in the turn-based too. The wife didn’t like Military Madness all that much, although it’s controls are a little weird to dive into. So I doubt I’ll ever have a human opponent, but I’m finding the computer is pretty tough on all these games so the challenge should last.

# 22 January 2009 at 1:48 pm

Lorkin said:

I have been playing the advance wars series since it was called Game Boy wars.

# 25 January 2009 at 1:54 pm

JuanO said:

I’m a big fan of RTS and TBS games as well. Final Fantasy Tactics, Advance Wars, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms… but I never finished Advanced wars either. I’m still on the final level… that damn black army (it’s been a while since I played, so I’m not sure if that’s what the army was called) they keep using that meteor attack and destroying my armies.

Final Fantasy Tactics is by far my favorite… still waiting for Santa to bring me FFA2. :(

Oh, and Lorkin, I had to look up Game Boy wars on Wikipedia. It says it was only released in Japan! Dude, you are hardcore! Importing a foreign game and playing in Japanese - that’s dedication, man. Good on ya!

# 25 January 2009 at 8:53 pm

Lorkin said:

Simpler RTS games are not that hard to play in japanese. You only had a few commands to worry about. I wouldn’t want to try something more advanced in japanese.

Final Fantasy Tactics on Playstation is ,in my opinion, the best turn based RPG EVER. The tactics series on GBA and the DS are good I think they are limited by the ANNOYING laws system. Altough, A2 is better about it.

# 26 January 2009 at 2:06 pm

JuanO said:

I wasn’t even thinking of the playstation version. Very true, it was a much better version. I’m glad to hear that A2 is better about the laws, they could get really annoying sometimes.

# 27 January 2009 at 10:15 pm

Brian (author) said:

Good to see that Hudson is remaking Military Madness for current gen consoles. The promise of on-line battles should increase replay value a lot. And a new interface will be welcomed. The TG16 UI was a bear.

Trailer: http://bit.ly/2UMQtz

# 18 June 2009 at 2:52 pm