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Under Fire!

Game ID: GID0371309
Collection Status
Description

Under Fire was a tactical level computer game released by Avalon Hill's computer division in 1985 but like most Avalon Hill computer games, was behind the industry standards for graphics and gameplay. It was not billed as a computer version of Squad Leader, though it did bear some similarities in that players commanded roughly company sized forces. Only three maps were available for play. The game was released for Apple II, Commodore 64, and DOS systems. The game was unique (and rather unsatisfying to many) in that for each of the nine scenarios, victory was not declared at game's end. A results screen would show losses in men and equipment, and list possession of objectives, leaving the determination of "victory" to the player. Like the original Squad Leader board game, German, Russian and American nationalities were represented. Unlike earlier attempts at computerized tactical combat simulations (notably Dniepr River Line, also by Avalon Hill, which included a physical copy of Squad Leader's board 3 and cardboard counters which were necessary for gameplay), the computer tracked the movement and position of all units as well as handling all computations for sighting and combat resolution. (Some computer games, notably those by Simulations Canada, were being sold at that time with either a physical mapboard and game pieces that the player had to use to manually track movement and position, or even plastic covered maps and grease pencils).

Initial packaging had the name of the designer, Ralph H. Bosson, over the title on the box front so as to read Ralph Bosson's UNDER FIRE!, but subsequent packaging replaced his name and read Avalon Hill's UNDER FIRE! instead.

An Extended Capabilities Disk was sold by Avalon Hill also, adding 56 more US, German and Russian assault guns and tanks to the game, as well as providing Japanese, British and Italian forces, with two additional maps and six more scenarios.

A Second Extended Capabilities Disk was also sold, bringing a campaign layer to the game, increasing the speed of play, and making use of 64K of additional memory (where available).

Source: Wikipedia, "Avalon Hill's UNDER FIRE", available under the CC-BY-SA License.

Game By Ralph Bosson

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