Nuclear War is a single player turn-based strategy game developed by New World Computing and released for the Amiga in 1989 and later for MS-DOS. It presents a satirical, cartoonish nuclear battle between five world powers, in which the winner is whoever retains some population when everyone else on earth is dead.
The game's introduction includes an homage to Dr. Strangelove. Each player – one human, four computer-controlled – is represented by a caricature of a national leader (the MS-DOS version allows more than one human player).
Nuclear War (MS-DOS)
If there is a computer-controlled winner at the end of the game, that leader is depicted jumping for joy in the middle of a devastated wasteland, crowing 'I won! I won!' If the human player wins only the high score board is shown. Once a player (computer or human) loses, all of their stockpiled weapons are automatically launched at the other players. It is possible for a game to have no winner because of this. If this happens, a cut scene of the earth shattering and exploding is shown, and the high score table appears (though without any new entries).
The following characters are available in the game; the public figure being satirized is listed in parentheses: Ronnie Raygun (Ronald Reagan), P.M. Satcher (Margaret Thatcher), Infidel Castro (Fidel Castro), Col. Malomar Khadaffy (Muammar al-Gaddafi), Ayatollah Kookamamie (Ruhollah Khomeini), Mao the Pun (Mao Zedong), Jimi Farmer (Jimmy Carter), Tricky Dick (Richard Nixon), Mikhail Gorabachef (Mikhail Gorbachev), Ghanji (Mahatma Gandhi).
In the July 1990 edition of Games International (Issue 16), Brian Walker didn't think this was a particularly challenging game, commenting, 'All good clean fun with nothing to stretch the brain cells.' He concluded by giving the game a rating of 7 out of 10 for gameplay and 8 out of 10 for graphics, saying, 'What lifts the game above average is the omnipresent humour.' In the July 1990 edition of Dragon (Issue #159), Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser characterized the game as 'challenging', despite its tongue in cheek humour. However, they were disappointed that only one player could play the game at a time. Nevertheless, they gave the game an above-average rating of 41⁄2 out of 5. In the October 1990 edition of Computer Gaming World, Chuck Moss favorably reviewed the game's graphics, fast and brief game play, and humorous computer opponents. Surveys of opinions about wargames with modern settings conducted for Computer Gaming World in 1992 and 1994 awarded the game a rating of 31⁄2 out of 5.
More details about this game can be found on Wikipedia.org.
This version of Nuclear War was designed for personal computers with operating system MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System), which was operating system developed by Microsoft in 1981. It was the most widely-used operating system in the first half of the 1990s. MS-DOS was supplied with most of the IBM computers that purchased a license from Microsoft. After 1995, it was pushed out by a graphically more advanced system - Windows and its development was ceased in 2000. At the time of its greatest fame, several thousand games designed specifically for computers with this system were created. Today, its development is no longer continue and for emulation the free DOSBox emulator is most often used. More information about MS-DOS operating system can be found here.
Available online emulators:
5 different online emulators are available for Nuclear War. These emulators differ not only in the technology they use to emulate old games, but also in of various game controllers, multiplayer mode, mobile phone touchscreen, emulation speed, absence or presence of embedded ads and in many other parameters. For maximum gaming enjoyment, it's important to choose the right emulator, because on each PC and in different Internet browsers, the individual emulators behave differently. The basic features of each emulator available for this game Nuclear War are summarized in the following table:
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