Balance of Power

Chris Crawford had been an Atari employee (he was, among other things, the main author of De Re Atari: A Guide to Effective Programming). After he left the company he tought himself programming on the Macintosh. This was the first game he wrote as a freelancer.

Balance of Power is an anti-wargame rather than a wargame, for the goal is to expand your sphere of political influence—playing either the USA or the Soviet Union—within a limited time span without causing a nuclear war. It has been called the ultimate Cold War sim.

It was among the first Macintosh games and by far the first game ever to be ported to Windows. It is one of the few games that actually include a windowed environment into gameplay. A better known example is SimCity, lesser known examples are the Mac ports of the early Ultima and Wizardry games.

Versions

• The original game for black and white Macintosh, 1985.
• The Windows 1.0 port from the same year. This was by far the first retail game for Windows (the next was probably Battle Chess 1991), and one of the very few games from the Windows 1.0 era in general.
• Apple ][, 1986.
• Amiga, 1987.
• The Atari ST version, 1987, which ran in both hi-res monochrome and the otherwise rarely used mid-res (640×200) color mode.

The 1990 Edition

Chris Crawford rarely made sequels to his games. But not long after the release of Balance of Power, the political face of the globe changed dramatically. So he succumbed to the deluge of mails he got and created this sequel, which is probably unique in the history of computer games as being less a technical than a political update.

1990 is not the year of release, it was chosen as a date in the immediate future. Actual release date was 1988 for Macintosh and 1989 for Windows, Amiga, Atari ST, and Apple IIGS. On the latter, it ran in super hi-res mode, which is the same as the Atari ST's mid-res: 640×200. Says a lot about the two platforms, doesn't it?

Of the added features, the most significant is the addition of a Multipolar level. In this level, the actions of every country in the world impacts the course of the game. Smaller countries can go to war with each other, with or without prodding from one of the Superpowers. Say, for example, Iraq decided to invade Kuwait. What would you do? To help discourage countries from making unwise policy decisions, there is a minor country crisis feature that can be used to persuade minor countries on a course of action. There are additional displays showing the state of all aid and troops going into and out of a country, and players can take advantage of trade policies, making this an even more complex game than the original.—Tony Cervo

Another addition was the Crisis Advisory Board, a kind of in-game help function, possibly added as a response to players' complaint of the steep learning curve of the first version.

Links

• Matthew Stibbe on Balance of Power
• Chris Crawford's Website. You could once download the 1990 Edition (Mac) here, but it's since gone.