#030 - Bomber

Release Date: July 1973

Platform: Mainframe (BASIC Type-In)

Genre: Simulation

Developer(s): David Sherman

Publisher(s): Digital Equipment Corporation

World War II has long been a favourite topic of game devs. It's easy pickings, when you think about it, with clearly distinct villains that most feel no remorse for slaughtering, and the opportunity to experience and be a hero in the largest scale military conflict the world has ever seen.

Naturally then, the interest in war and particularly World War II started early in the medium's lifespan. Today's game, Bomber, is not the first game based on the war - that would be the 1972 game Graf - Spee, named after the German battlecruiser of the same name. Bomber is, however, the first World War II game available to play. (Graf - Spee has a later re-release on the Sol-20 microcomputer, so we'll get to see it much later.)

Spoiler alert: this illustration is better than the game.

Once again we have David Ahl's 101 BASIC Computer Games book to thank for this game. It was included in the original July 1973 release of the book, and returned in the 1978 microcomputer edition, although there it was given the name Bombs Away. Can't say I understand the name change; there's no other game named Bomber in the 1978 edition. There were a few other games named Bomber floating around at the time, including an Apple II title, so perhaps the name change occurred to avoid confusion.

They couldn't even be bothered doing up a new picture for it here.

Unfortunately I can't avoid confusion when trying to find information about the game's author, David Sherman. There are several men who share the same name, including a relatively well-known author (who is definitely not this David Sherman.) Of the ones I found I highly doubt any of them were the high school student that developed Bomber while a student at Curtis Jr. High School in Sudbury, Massachusetts. Sherman has no other game credits, according to MobyGames, so there really aren't any solid leads to follow on this one.

Sherman had a rather... odd approach to creating Bomber. The game touts of allowing you to pilot a bomber plane for one of four nations involved in World War II, with several missions available for each nation, differing in country or choice of plane. Sounds rather interesting and expansive for a 1973 game, right? Initially, I had quite a bit of excitement for Bomber.

The opening screen. Not even a title.

For my playthrough, I simply went through all the nations one by one, doing each of their missions sequentially. By doing this, I realised something very quickly about this "game," and my excitement was quickly dashed.

In reality, all of the "missions" blend into a short series of questions that you must answer well enough to have a chance of success, or escape at least. Actually, it's not even a series of questions, it's usually just one - "How many missions have you flown?" Put in a high enough number, and you'll usually have a successful mission (though you'll get told off if you go too high.) If it's not quite there, you'll "miss" your target, and how to escape retaliatory fire. At this point you get to choose what weapons the enemy has, as well as how accurate their gunners are. I was asking what the point of the game was at this point, as I can just make them suck at shooting their guns, and I should escape, as long as I don't give them both guns and missiles.

This is as exciting as a mission can get. Why do I get to choose how dangerous the enemies are?

Three of the four nations fall into the above pattern: Italy, Allies, and Germany. You even get told off by the game for picking the Germans (there are several little quips made by the game depending on your choices.) Japan is the one exception to the pattern, as there's only one mission, and it's kamikaze. The game simply asks if you've flown kamikaze before (hint: nobody flies kamikaze twice.) If you say no, you die, and if you say yes, you die but can sometimes escape. How that works, I can't say.

In the case of the Japanese, death is the only outcome.

There's some flavour text referencing historical battles and events across the European, North African and Pacific theatres of the war, but that's really all the game has going for it. I think Sherman was "Fresh out of training" when making this one...

Time Played: 7 minutes

That's for two full-playthroughs, which was more than enough.

Difficulty: N/A

There's not really a game here - you're just answering questions which you're allowed to rig in your favour.

Gameplay: 0

Practically no game here, to be blunt. In terms of game design, it fails on every front - there's no challenge, no payoff, the fact that you have total freedom to rig the game in your favour defeats the entire purpose of it being a game in the first place.

Controls: 5

Here, it's fairly rudimentary and of-the-time.

Visual: 1

Yeah, not willing to be generous with this one. It doesn't do a whole lot to elevate the formatting above what's necessary.

Functionality: 5

No technical problems.

Accessibility: 3

Standard fare for text games.

Fun Factor: 0

Bomber is one of those games where you just ask "what's the point?"

Bomber does just barely enough to save it from the dishonour of being the absolute worst game on the Tier List, with a still-pathetic score of 14. It's currently the fourth-worst game I've played so far, but it somehow managed to feel worse than that, which is an impressive feat.

Well, that's a fun way to start of the new year - with an absolutely terrible game. Sometimes they're more fun than the good ones, because I get to rag on them and crack jokes at the game's expense.

Things are going to get more interesting, as next week we're taking a trip back to Ancient Greece. Hope you've brushed up on your Pythagorean theory.