Retro Replay Retro Gaming History, Reviews & Emulation
Back then I was a nerd. Now apparently I’m just the target demographic.
Axis & Allies came to PC on 06 October 1998, bringing the classic World War II board game to the computer. Five major powers, armies and navies spread across the globe, production to manage, territories to capture and plenty of dice deciding whether your brilliant strategy actually worked.
Of course I had to have it.
I’ve always loved WWII: the action, suspense, strategy and tactics. But even casual gamers can bounce pretty hard off the more hardcore strategy games. Axis & Allies hit a nice middle ground: enough strategy to keep me thinking without requiring a staff officer and three binders of documentation to play.
I wasn’t a huge PC gamer back then if I had a choice. But strategy games were one genre that just never felt quite right on a console. We had games like Command & Conquer and Red Alert on PlayStation, and StarCraft 64 would eventually make it to the N64, but playing an RTS with a controller just wasn’t the same.
Did you know the PC game stayed remarkably close to its tabletop roots, right down to purchasing units, controlling economically valuable territories and dice-driven combat? And if that wasn’t enough, Iron Blitz followed in 1999 with more ways to fight the war.
For games like this, I eventually had to admit it: sometimes the PC really was the better place to play.
Were there any PC-only games that finally convinced you to put down the controller and sit at the computer?
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