Gaming

“Flawed on every fundamental level, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is possibly the most unplayable garbage available on the Nintendo Entertainment System.” — Game Informer

By Patrick S. Baker

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Jekyll & Hyde) was a video game developed by Advance Communication Company and released by Bandai for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1988. The game was based on the classic horror novella by Robert Louis Stevenson.

The novella tells the story of the brilliant scientist, Dr. Henry Jekyll, well known for his decency and generosity, but with a hidden and terrible dark side. He creates a potion to separate his dark side from his better self. Instead, the mixture changes him into a cruel and violent man named Mr. Hyde.

Jekyll & Hyde was a unique game for its time, in that it tried to tell a rather complex and subtle story through a video game.

by Dennis ‘MATT VARNISH’ Campbell

The second Canadian Tabletop Championships (CTC) was held over the Mother’s Day Weekend here in Ottawa, ON, Canada, after a 4-year hiatus thanks to Covid 19.  I attended the first CTC in 2019 where I was the ringer for Flames of War on Day One and wound up winning the Team Yankee event with my Syrians on Day Two.  I would have participated in the two-day Bolt Action event this year were it not on Mother’s Day and my wife’s birthday weekend, but I am assured next year will be earlier in the month, the first weekend of May.

By Tom Gall

Terrain in the form of buildings for the tabletop has evolved over the years. The technology for what makes for a great building continues to evolve. Scratch builds, plastic model kits, cast resin, pre-painted resin, MDF, 3D print just to name a few. Depending on how long you’ve been around you might have a variety of samples from from technology stage.

I was especially happy many years back when Miniature Building Authority and Battlefront/Gale Force 9 offered pre-painted terrain called “Battlefield in a box” that once the packaging was open you had something to use on the tabletop. It was nice to not be adding to my paint queue for a change.

Old favorites like Novus Design while great kit still had a “you must paint it” step. They just recently retired from the business and will be missed.

Micro Art Studios recently released a line of Normandy-themed buildings with “pre-painted” MDF in 28mm. This article takes a look at the line.

By Caroline Gilmore

The day is May 1, 2024: China is about to attack Taiwan, North and South Korea are poised at the precipice of conflict, and in India, unexpected floods force people from their homes.

Thus begins “Rising Tides,” the annual kinetics wargame organized by Strategic Crisis Simulations (SCS), an undergraduate-run organization at George Washington University.

By Tom Gall

This year I was pleasantly surprised to be in London on business at exactly the same time as Salute the largest independent game convention in the UK. This year, the 50th anniversary, was perfect timing for the first time ever attending. The event is held at the ExCel center on the east side of London. It was super easy to get to by the London Underground via the new Elizabeth Line. Once inside, queue up to enter…

Different than AdeptiCon or GenCon, no badge pickup, just get in line, get to it. Also different from those other Cons was something that really had me going, I wanted to sign up for a variety of games to play. Maybe a tournament? Or something? I did pack a tape measure and dice but going in this idea of going to a game convention and not knowing if you’d even get to play anything was well, weird.

With Salute it’s different than the states, there it’s run by the South London Warlords club. A good portion of the games were run by the variety of game clubs in the area. Then intermixed with the demos games were row after row of vendor, demo games, vendor, vendor, demo games. Different, but refreshing especially if you were looking to try out new things as well as shop.

By Jim Naughton

Just when you thought it was safe to use or ignore my original treatise on Warsaw Pact artillery, BF introduced new toys. With the introduction of Red Dawn there are two new indirect fire systems – the 2S9 Nona self-propelled gun-mortar and the BM-37 82mm Mortar.

Previously NDNG has published three articles explaining Warsaw PACT artillery: TOS-UP Part 1, TOS-UP Part 2, and TOS-UP Part 3.  I will draw a few insights from previous for comparison but I’m not going to repeat the information. Part I identified the artillery available in Team Yankee and gave the statistics.  The next section furnishes data on the two new weapons.

The 2S9 NONA (Noveysheye Orudiye Nazemnoy Artillerii or Newest Ordnance of the Ground Artillery) was introduced in 1981 to replace towed mortars in rapidly expanding Air Assault forces as well as the towed guns of the Air Assault Divisions.  The NONA began showing up in Motor Rifle Regiments in the late 1980s as production continued.  A variant was built into the BTR-80 and towed versions exist for mountain fighting, and for airmobile infantry units (which have little organic transport).  Battlefront represents the 2S9 baseline, built into the BTR-D hull.

The BF model is sold separately from the generic BTR-D package (which features infantry carrier, BTR-ZD, and BTR-RD variants) and represents an essential component of a ‘pure’ VDV force.  The NONA populates the niche in VDV units that would be filled by the 2S1 Carnation and is also available as a support choice in the same niche of the Support Section of the Force Diagram occupied by the Carnation.

By Michael “ACON” Rafferty

AdeptiCon 2023 is in the books!

AdeptiCon 2023 was held March 22^nd – 26^th in Schaumburg, IL. This year we had over 6,500 badged attendees, which is the largest AdeptiCon we’ve ever had. It looks like we’ve fully recovered from the COVID slump and things are bigger and better than ever. This was the second year of having a full second venue at the Hyatt, which grew from just hosting historicals to also hosting Lord of the Rings and A Song of Ice and Fire.

We also had a 1:1 scale Urbanmech

By David Garvin

When I first played Squad Leader back in 1983, I found that 35-page rule book to be rather complex. The rules were laid out in Programmed Instruction in order to facilitate ease of learning. This just meant that the player only had to read a few pages, play a scenario and then progress.  By the time the player had gone through the book, he or she could then play any scenario.

This method of instruction continued through the original series, up to and including GI: Anvil of Victory. By that time, the player could play any of 47 scenarios released with the games, and a number more of officially-released scenarios. There were a few third-party scenarios, including some from On All Fronts and even Dragon Magazine. That said, as I attempted to parse some of the rules while hanging out with my friends, the language was at times dense.

Later as I delved into Advanced Squad Leader, (ASL) I found the rule book to be too much for me to initially comprehend. It was around 1986 and I failed to put any serious effort into learning the rules or the game.  Programmed Instruction was now a thing of the past, and even though there was a learning chapter, my friend Gary and I just never really got into it.

Imagine my surprise then, many years later as I was learning how to play, that not only were many people playing ASL – likely more than at any other point in its history – but also that there was a very large and vibrant international community of players. In fact, one of the first of many third-party producers made ASL scenarios in French!

“This game is so bad it makes Superman 64 look like Doom.” — anonymous game reviewer

By Patrick S. Baker

Okay, boys and girls, please have a 55-gallon drum of hand sanitizer ready for this one. Today gentle readers I recount the story of not only one of the worst video games of all time but also one of the foulest and most atrocious video games of all time. And NO, I’m not exaggerating in any way about what a disgusting piece of work this game is.

Custer’s Revenge, also known as Mystique Presents Swedish Erotica: Custer’s Revenge was one of three ‘adult’ video games released November 1982 in a package of video games called Mystique Presents Swedish Erotica. The other two games in the set were Beat ‘Em & Eat ‘Em and Bachelor Party.

Many sources erroneously report that the games were produced by a game company named Mystique, but in fact is no game company named Mystique. Mystique was the brand name for the line of adult games produced by American Multiple Industries (AMI).

By Tom Gall

With the release of the Berlin German book by Battlefront, capabilities not seen since FOW version 3 for night fighting are once again available to those that like to run Germans. This article is going to look at the ins and outs of taking advantage of this new material.