Retrospective of Harpoon, the Tabletop Game
By Patrick S. Baker
The Personal Computer version of Harpoon was released for the DOS operating system in 1989 by Three-Sixty Pacific and it took the gaming world by (Red) Storm (Rising). The naval simulation received raved reviews and I, like many other military officers and others interested in modern naval warfare, rushed out to buy the game. I even invested in an upgraded computer to play it.
At that point, I had no idea that the marvelous game I spent literally days playing was based on a tabletop and miniatures game. But everything comes from something else and Harpoon was no exception. Indeed, the game did not spring Athena-like from Larry Bond’s head.
According to , the then twenty-four-year-old Naval Lieutenant Junior Grade Larry Bond, encountered the US Navy’s official computer wargame, NAVal TActical Game (NAVTAG) in 1976. NAVTAG was the digitized successor to the manual pen and paper SEA control Tactical Analysis Game (SEATAG). NAVTAG only came in a classified version and took three computers to play, limiting its utility.