Number 247
(3.1 points)
Balance of Power 1990
1991: 70
Nothing dates a game more than the Soviet Union existing well into the Nineties, but Balance of Power does that.
It's almost 1990, and it's a bipolar world, where the USA and the USSR have divided the globe into spheres of influence. You are the leader of one of the two super powers, tasked with maintaining a higher level of prestige than your rivals, while not upsetting them so much that it results in cataclysmic nuclear war. Available to you are many options: funding insurgents, sending in troops, protecting your allies and so forth. The central strategy at play is to keep your powerful friends on side, while undermining those countries more sympathetic to the other's cause, whether through soft power or hard power. The game is about as attractive as an Excel spreadsheet, and the unoptimised code means calculating the sequence of events can take a long time, but the engrossing and mature gameplay is something rarely seen since.
I don't mind a cerebral game, and the premise of this one is intriguing - it's especially fun to imagine the Soviets being so powerful even in 1990, as hindsight is a wonderful thing. Nevertheless, there are just too many other games for me to look through in this list, so this one will have to wait. You might want to maximise the processor power in WinUAE on this one, though, because it is seriously slow.
Recommended TOSEC disk(s):Balance of Power - The 1990 Edition (1989)(Mindscape)[cr QTX]
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