General Chaos

General Chaos arrived in 1994 under the Electronic Arts label and mixes two genres that rarely met: tactical strategy and fast two-player couch action. The view is top-down, the maps are small, and instead of commanding armies you handle a squad of a few soldiers with distinct loadouts, from riflemen and flamethrower operators to a demolitions man.

Combat runs in real time. You switch between soldiers, move them into cover, flank and try to push the opposition off its position. Squad composition is chosen before the engagement based on the terrain, so part of the decision-making happens before a shot is fired. When two soldiers end up in each other's faces, the game cuts to a brief scuffle fought with fists. The whole presentation is deliberately cartoonish and exaggerated, but underneath it sits a surprisingly readable system of cover and firing angles.

The Sega Mega Drive was well suited to this: fast redraw of small sprites, clean two-controller input and enough headroom to keep eight figures moving at once. Head-to-head or cooperative play with a second person is the real reason to load it up. Against the computer it is entertaining; against someone sitting next to you it is considerably better.

On OldGame.cz you can play it straight in the browser, which suits a game built on short engagements, since a single battle takes only a few minutes.

It has aged well largely because it never depended on technical spectacle. The controls can be unruly and the roster of unit types could stand to be deeper, but the core idea of small-scale tactics delivered at action speed has stayed fresh.