Πολεμικά παιχνίδια της εποχής DOS και 16-bit

War games divide along one line before anything else: how they treat time. A turn-based wargame stops the clock. The map is cut into hexes or squares, every unit carries attack, defence and movement values, and a fight is resolved by setting those numbers against terrain, supply and an odds table. Nothing happens while you think. Real-time tactics plays the same battle without pauses, with far fewer units and none of the base building or resource gathering of a strategy game: you are handed a force, and the whole game is what you do with it over the next half hour. Both traditions are collected here, along with single-vehicle simulations and action titles that put you inside one tank, one submarine or one squad.

The operational hex wargame is the older strand. SSI produced its best-known example in Panzer General, where a core force carries from scenario to scenario and prestige points earned in battle pay for upgrades and reinforcements. Allied General repeats the structure from the other side of the war, and Steel Panthers, designed by Gary Grigsby, drops the scale to individual vehicles and squads. Battle Isle, published by Blue Byte in 1991, keeps the hex grid but resolves both sides' orders simultaneously. The rest of the strand is openly historical: the V for Victory series beginning at Utah Beach, Clash of Steel across the whole European war, No Greater Glory and Decisive Battles of the American Civil War on the 1861-65 campaigns, and Conflict in Vietnam, published by MicroProse in 1986.

Real-time tactics arrived a decade later. Close Combat (1996) removed base building entirely and made morale the central statistic: soldiers under fire go to ground, refuse orders and break, so a platoon can be beaten without heavy casualties. Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines, from the Spanish studio Pyro Studios, narrowed the idea to six specialists behind German lines, where being seen usually means starting the mission again. Sudden Strike 2 widens the scale and adds ammunition and fuel to manage, and Hidden & Dangerous, made by the Czech studio Illusion Softworks, mixes squad orders with direct control of each soldier.

The rest of the collection zooms in further. Cannon Fodder, written at Sensible Software and released on the Amiga in 1993 and on DOS the following year, is played entirely with the mouse and plants a cross on a hill for every recruit you lose; a cheerful-looking game with a very direct point. Jagged Alliance turns the same subject into a turn-based tactical RPG in which the mercenaries you hire hold opinions about each other. On the simulation side, M1 Tank Platoon (MicroProse, 1989) gives you four Abrams tanks and lets you switch between crew positions, Silent Service 2 covers the Pacific submarine war, WolfPack lets you play either side of an Atlantic convoy battle, and Great Naval Battles: North Atlantic 1939-1943, published by SSI, reconstructs surface actions at gun range.

Titles marked as playable run directly in the browser through an emulator, with no installation and no registration. A physical keyboard helps: most of these games predate mouse-driven interfaces and expect function keys for orders and reports.