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/ Genres / Strategy / Midway Campaign

Midway Campaign

DOS - 1983
Also available on: Apple II - Atari 8-bit - Commodore 64 - TRS-80 CoCo - VIC-20

One of the oldest naval wargames ever made, Avalon Hill's Battle for Midway (a.k.a. Midway Campaign) is a very primitive ASCII wargame written entirely in BASIC that simulates the battle of Midway Island in World War II.

You must type in commands similar to text adventures, and there's no campaign mode to speak of. You can control either the Japanese fleet (including carriers Asagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, and Zuiho) or American (including carriers Enterprise, Hornet, Yorktown, and Midway). At the end of battle, the game will report whether any carrier has been lost, and how many planes on either side are shot down, as well as a bottom-line report of which side won the tactical victory.

Overall, Battle for Midway is probably too primitive to hold anyone's interest for long, but it serves as a good history lesson of how wargames of the past are programmed... this being a BASIC program, you can "hack" the game pretty quickly to see how it was made ;)

Note: Additional comments from M.E. Brooks' synopsis: "an operational/strategic simulation of the Midway Campaign, this game was one of the first Midway computer versions. Using an X-Y axis to depict operations during the battle gave an adequate challenge in 1980, but its design parameters were soon revealed to be obsolete."

Review By HOTUD

Comments and reviews

Bartislartfast 01 May. 2022

Simple but very addicting. Have played this probably a hundred times over the years. Send out your planes then comes the nail-biting wait. No two games play out the same.

2
collin 26 Jan. 2018

Hey, Creativeguy,

If you download it, you can get into the quick basic files. They are appended ".BAS." And it's total spaghetti code, without comments. But cool.

0
Mr. Spridget 21 Aug. 2016

You can also do "What If" scenarios by going into the program and changing the number of planes on each carrier. For example, the Navy used a 25 / 50 / 25 ratio of fighters, dive bombers and torpedo planes. Later, they switched to a 40 / 40 / 20 ration. Or you can put up a 100 F4F CAP.

0
CreativeGuy 29 Jul. 2016

Is the code to this available anywhere? I want to teach my nephew how the code works - see if he can rewrite it in python.

1
RSJREV 14 Sep. 2015

I agree that it is primitive, but it still portrays the Battle of Midway well.

0
zorkman 12 Aug. 2015

Very dated, & early wargame.

0
kevnifico 10 Aug. 2014

Any way that midway campaign can run on a kidle fire hdx?

-1
Darkguardian1314 13 Aug. 2012

I used to play this game on the TRS-80 in the library. I had to type out the basic code and save it on a cassette tape. It's been over 27 years but I got the hang of it again. Thanks.

1

No comment nor review for this game at the moment.

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Downloads

DOS version
Game file
United Kingdom English
68 KB
Commodore 64 version
Game file
United Kingdom English
9 KB
Atari 8-bit version
Game file
United Kingdom English
10 KB
Apple II version
Game file
United Kingdom English
16 KB
VIC-20 version
Game file
United Kingdom English
321 KB
TRS-80 CoCo version
Game file
United Kingdom English
14 KB

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