Guns of Fort Defiance

Guns of Fort Defiance is a military game for the Commodore 64 in which you command not an army but a single cannon. You stand on the ramparts of a fort, aiming, loading and trying to stop an advancing force before it reaches the walls.

Artillery games are among the oldest computer genres in existence – finding the right angle and charge is a natural task for a machine that can crunch ballistics. Guns of Fort Defiance goes further than the usual set-angle-and-fire routine, though: it simulates the actual drill of operating a muzzle-loading gun, from choosing ammunition to the reloading cycle, turning the player into a working member of a gun crew.

Ammunition choice is what makes each assault wave a tactical puzzle. One situation calls for solid shot at long range, another for canister against infantry closing in. The pace is deliberate; a cool head decides the battle, not fast fingers.

The catalogue record lists no year or author, but the game itself belongs to the early wave of war simulations on home computers, when even publishers of tabletop wargames were moving into software and aiming at patient players rather than the arcade crowd.

Game historians associate the title with the early software of Avalon Hill, the publisher that carried its tabletop wargaming expertise into computing. The overall tone fits: the game wants above all to be credible, drawing its entertainment from an understanding of period military technology rather than from spectacle, which was exactly the Avalon Hill way.

You can try your hand at the gun drill from an armchair – on OldGame.cz the game fires up right in the browser.