Typical of the genre, it is advisable that you read the manual first, especially if you are not familiar with the period of warfare detailed in the game. Also note the typo in the EGA medium resolution comment! Full disclosure: whilst I have the original manual and played this game on the Amiga, the screenshots are from the PC package “Larry Bond’s Harpoon: Ultimate Collection”, more specifically version 1.00 and it is this version that is being reviewed. I still have the original manual and the minimum specs page is quite fun to read now. Given its genesis, the game offers at best EGA graphics, though those of you with CGA or Tandy were equally well catered for. It was the latter version that I played as a teenager and I have rather vivid memories of tucking myself away in my grandparent’s dining room with my trusty Amiga 500 and a 14 inch portable TV and spending most, if not all, of a Saturday engrossed in the game. Taking two and a half years of development time, Harpoon the computer game was initially released for the PC, with Apple Mac and Amiga versions following.
Naturally, a computer version followed in 1989. It was further used for scenario planning for the Clancy/Bond collaborative work, Red Storm Rising (though Bond insists that he only wrote 1% of that novel). The board game was used by Bond and a little known would be author, Tom Clancy, to play out scenarios for Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October. Its designer, Larry Bond, is a former US Navy officer and wanted to simulate accurate naval tactics and strategy at home. For me, one of those games is Harpoon.īrief history lesson first (sorry!): Harpoon began life as a board game designed to simulate modern naval warfare at a tactical level. Games that even now make us reminisce and hark back to days long gone. Games that grabbed us by the scruff of the neck and chained us to our respective machines for hours on end.
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