Falklands 82

Falklands 82 is a 1984 war strategy game from PSS studio that reconstructs the conflict between the United Kingdom and Argentina over the Falkland Islands just two years after the actual war. The player commands either the British or Argentine forces and directs the movement of ships, aircraft, and ground units on a strategic map of the South Atlantic, while having to account for distances, supply, and limited resources, much as the real commanders on both sides had to.

The game emphasised logistics and planning over direct combat — the key was correctly timing the movement of the fleet and landing units so the enemy had no time to prepare, and sensibly dividing limited forces between defence and attack. The distance between home ports and the battlefield played a role similar to the real one, so both sides had to reckon with long crossings over open ocean and the risk that the fleet would be struck before it could land. The graphical presentation on the Spectrum was simple, based on maps with unit icons, but clear enough for the player to follow the progress of the entire campaign and the gradual depletion of supplies. Given its subject, this was one of the first games to deal with an almost current military conflict, which at the time provoked conflicting reactions from players and the press alike.

Contemporary reception was mixed precisely because of the sensitivity of the topic so soon after the actual war, but many reviewers nonetheless praised the game for its solid strategic depth and its effort to faithfully capture the logistics of a modern conflict rather than offering simplified action. Today Falklands 82 is interesting mainly as a historical artefact — a demonstration of how quickly the games industry could react to current events, and one of the titles that helped establish the genre of realistic war simulations on eight-bit computers, even though their slow pace requires some getting used to for today's players.

Why play it: For fans of realistic war simulations interested in the genre's history — a document of its time showing how quickly the games industry reacted to current events, even though its slow pace takes some getting used to.