Silent Service 1+2

Silent Service 1+2 is a compilation of two classic submarine simulation games, Silent Service (1985) and Silent Service II (1990), set in the Pacific Ocean during World War II. Players take command of U.S. submarines on historical war patrols, engaging in tactical missions against Japanese shipping with realistic elements like stealth attacks, navigation, and damage repair, all within immersive single-player scenarios that capture the era’s submarine warfare.

Silent Service 1+2: The Deep-Dive That Defined a Genre

Introduction: The Echoes of the Deep

Long before the photorealistic hull-crushing tension of Silent Hunter or the strategic fleet command of World of Warships, there was a green-and-black schematic of the Pacific Ocean on a Commodore 64 screen. Silent Service, and its more ambitious sequel Silent Service II, are not merely games; they are foundational pillars of the submarine simulation genre. They represent the moment when the intricate, terrifying ballet of undersea warfare was distilled into a compelling digital experience by a visionary designer operating under severe technical constraints. This compilation, Dusted off and re-released by Tommo’s Retroism label in 2014, allows us to traverse the timeline of a design philosophy in action—from a groundbreaking 1985 prototype to a 1990 magnum opus, all bundled together. This review will argue that the Silent Service series, particularly the sequel, stands as a masterclass in systemic design, historical emulation, and the art of making complexity accessible, cementing its legacy as a direct ancestor to nearly every naval combat sim that followed.

Development History & Context: Fractals and Feasibility

The MicroProse Incubator: To understand Silent Service is to understand MicroProse in the mid-1980s. Founded by the formidable duo of Sid Meier (“the designer”) and Bill Stealey (“the businessman”), the studio was carving a niche for itself with brutally authentic, detail-oriented military simulations like F-15 Strike Eagle. Stealey’s mantra was “accuracy sells,” but Meier’s genius lay in finding the fun kernel within that accuracy. Silent Service was conceived in this environment, a project born from Meier’s fascination with the tactical diversity of WWII submarine warfare in the vast Pacific Theater.

Sid Meier’s Design Epiphany: The development, spanning roughly eight months, was famously inspired by “a fractal technological trick.” This refers to the use of fractal algorithms to procedurally generate the ocean maps and, crucially, the random placement of Japanese convoys. This was a revolutionary solution for the era’s limited storage (floppy disks) and memory. It meant the game could offer an “infinite variety of situations” across the entire Southwest Pacific without requiring thousands of pre-designed scenarios. It made the world feel vast, unpredictable, and historically plausible—convoy routes could shift, and patrol sectors felt unique each time.

Artistic Collaboration & Platform Challenges: A significant milestone for Meier was that this was the first game he did not illustrate himself. Stealey hired Michael O. Haire, whose professional artwork convinced Meier that his own pixel-art skills were secondary. This professionalization of assets was crucial for Silent Service‘s immersive feel. The game’s creation was a feat of cross-platform engineering, launched first on the Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, and IBM PC. Each port involved significant work to handle the game’s core real-time simulation, its multiple dedicated screens (Chart, Periscope, Damage Control, etc.), and the intensive calculations for torpedo trajectories, all on hardware with measured clock cycles and kilobytes of RAM. The 1989 NES port, developed by Rare and published by Konami’s Ultra Games label, represented a major adaptation, simplifying controls for a d-pad and managing severe memory limitations.

The Sequel’s Evolution: By 1990, the PC landscape had transformed. Silent Service II (developed by MPS Labs, with Arnold Hendrick and Roy B. Gibson leading) leveraged VGA graphics (256 colors), AdLib and Roland MT-32 sound cards for digitized speech and effects, and vastly more powerful 386 processors. This wasn’t just a graphical upgrade; it was a systemic expansion. The sequel added a full War Career mode with promotions and medals, nine different US submarine classes (from the fragile S-class to the formidable Tench-class), digitized photographs for ship recognition, dynamic weather, and more sophisticated AI that made Japanese escorts truly dangerous.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive: The Weight of Command

Silent Service operates on a unique narrative plane. It has no traditional plot, characters, or dialogue trees. Instead, its narrative is emergent and systemic, authored by the player’s decisions and the game’s historical framework. The theme is the profound isolation, tension, and responsibility of command in the “Silent Service”—the WWII US Navy submarine force.

The Unseen Commander: You are a nameless, faceless captain. Your narrative is written in the “War Log” and the periodic letters from an unseen commanding officer—terse, formal communiqués that award commendations or issue reprimands. In SSII, this system blossoms into a full career arc. A successful patrol might earn you a Silver Star; sinking an aircraft carrier could bring the Navy Cross. Failure means a letter of reprimand, or worse, a desk assignment. The game translates abstract tonnage sunk into tangible career progression and historical recognition, making every decision weighty. Your name on the “Hall of Fame” is the ultimate narrative reward.

Historical Authenticity as Theme: The game’s scenarios are drawn from real history. SSII’s single missions include “Killer O’Kane” (based on Richard O’Kane’s exploits) and “Sink the Yamato!” The manual cites sources like Clay Blair Jr.’s Silent Victory. This isn’t just window dressing; it informs the mechanics. The types of Japanese ships (tankers, freighters, destroyers, battleships) have historical performance profiles. The availability of the Mark 14 torpedo (with its notoriously faulty exploder early in the war) can be toggled via “reality levels.” The theme is one of historical empathy—you are not a hero in a action movie, but a tactician operating under the same technological limitations and strategic pressures as real submariners. The claustrophobia, the agonizing waits, the split-second decisions under depth charge attack—these are the emotional core of the experience, born from systemic design rather than scripted storytelling.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems: The Conning Tower of Complexity

The gameplay is a masterpiece of information compartmentalization, a design choice born from necessity that became a genre standard.

The Interface as Command Center: Players navigate a series of screens, each representing a critical submarine station:
* Chart Room: The strategic/tactical map. You plot course, mark contacts, and plan your “end-around” maneuver (steaming ahead of a convoy’s projected path).
* Bridge/Periscope View: The primary engagement perspective. Day attacks use the periscope; night surface attacks rely on radar bearing and the faint silhouette of targets. The view is stark, often just wireframe or simple sprites against black, emphasizing dependence on instruments.
* Torpedo Data Computer (TDC) & Target Bearing Transmitter (TBT): The heart of the system. You lock onto a target (bearing, range, speed), and the TDC automatically calculates the solution for a hit. This was a deliberate simplification—Meier wanted players to feel like commanders, not human calculators. The tension comes from getting the solution while exposed.
* Damage Control: A critical screen showing hull breaches, system failures (oxygen, battery, engines), and flooding. A direct hit from a depth charge could cripple your dive planes or start a fire, forcing you to abort the patrol.
* Engine Room/Main Status: Monitors battery charge (consumed rapidly when submerged at high speed), diesel fuel (for surface running and battery recharge), and depth (with a crushing limit).

Core Loops: Hunt, Strike, Survive:
1. Patrol & Search: On War Patrols, you transit from your base (Pearl Harbor, Brisbane, Fremantle) to a patrol zone in accelerated time. You use the chart to search shipping lanes, relying on radar contacts, occasional periscope sweeps, and occasional “random encounter” events.
2. The Attack: The classic WW2 submarine dilemma: submerged daylight attack (using periscope, slower but concealed) or surface night attack (faster, using radar, but exposed to visual spotting and air attack). You must calculate range, angle, and lead. You fire a “spread” of 2-4 torpedoes (a hard limit from the original’s processor constraints) to increase hit probability against a maneuvering convoy.
3. Evasion & Survival: After firing, you become the hunted. Destroyers will ping sonar and begin pattern-running depth charge attacks. Evasion tactics are systemic: go deep and silent, use thermal layers (different water temperatures that disrupt sonar), deploy decoys (noise makers, in SSII), or attempt an emergency blow to surface and run. The “Christmas Tree” display (external sensors) becomes your lifeline.

Progression & Realism: Both games feature adjustable “reality levels” in the original. Crucially, this includes faulty torpedoes (the real-life Mark 14’s trouble), damage susceptibility, and crew efficiency. SSII adds the War Career, where you manage your submarine class’s attributes (S-class is fast shallow, Gato-class is robust and deep-diving). Your success in sinking tonnage, surviving, and completing objectives feeds directly into promotions and new assignments.

Flaws of the Era: The most cited criticism from contemporary reviews was the lack of a save game feature in the original Silent Service, a brutal oversight for a game with long patrols. The four-torpedo limit, while justified by tech limits, could feel punitive. The learning curve was steep; the dense manuals were essential, not optional.

World-Building, Art & Sound: From Schematics to Atmosphere

Visuals: Utility Over Splendor: The aesthetic is one of tactical diagrams and stark simulation. The original’s graphics are minimalist by design—green-hued oceans, black depths, simple geometric ship shapes. This wasn’t a failure of imagination but a clarity of interface. You needed to read your instruments, not admire a sunset. Silent Service II’s shift to VGA was monumental. Ship silhouettes became digitized photographs, offering crucial visual identification. The periscope view, while still sprite-based, felt more alive with slightly better waves and ship animations. The world map in SSII, showing your patrol route across the Pacific, was a masterpiece of geographic information design.

Sound: The Silence is Deafening: On 8-bit systems, sound was primarily beeps and bloops—functional alerts for sonar pings, torpedo firings, and depth charge explosions. The absence of ambient sound was itself a feature, simulating the eerie quiet of the deep. SSII leveraged sound cards to add Digitized Speech (” torpedoes away!,” “Commanding officer on deck!”) and more textured, ominous sound effects for depth charges and hull stress. The audio evolution mirrors the move from textbook to cockpit.

Atmosphere Through Constraint: The true atmosphere is born from the juxtaposition of sterile interface and lethal consequence. The “BATTLE STATIONS!” alert, the frantic switching between screens during an attack, the creeping dread of a sonar ping getting closer—these are generated by clean, logical systems. The art and sound serve the simulation, not the other way around.

Reception & Legacy: Charting the Course

Contemporary Acclaim & Commercial Success: Silent Service was a critical darling and a commercial hit. It won the prestigious Charles S. Roberts Award for Best Adventure Game for Home Computer of 1985. Reviews consistently praised its unparalleled realism and depth for a home computer title. Computer Gaming World called it “easily the best [submarine simulator]” and later ranked it #86 on its “150 Best Games of All Time” list, specifically for “introducing the control-room interface for submarine games on variety of platforms.” It was MicroProse’s second-best-selling Commodore 64 title by late 1987, with roughly 400,000 copies sold overall—a massive number for a niche sim.

Silent Service II was equally lauded, though noted as a significant step up in complexity. Reviewers highlighted its War Career mode and graphical leap. However, by 1993, Computer Gaming World‘s retrospective survey declared the original “obsolete… superseded by Silent Service II“—the inevitable fate of iterative simulation design.

The Re-Releases and Cults of Personality: The 2014 Silent Service 1+2 compilation, sold via GOG and Steam for a pittance ($1.19-$5.99), is a preservation triumph. It bundles the definitive versions (DOS SSII with its manuals and maps) pre-packaged with DOSBox, ensuring compatibility on modern Windows, macOS, and Linux. User reviews on GOG are overwhelmingly positive (4.4/5), with users citing nostalgia, historical interest, and the unique “just one more patrol” hook. Steam reviews are more mixed (“Mixed” on Steambase), with negatives often citing the daunting learning curve, dated controls (even with the overlay), and the sheer difficulty for modern audiences accustomed to hand-holding. One common theme: “This isn’t Silent Hunter.” It’s slower, more abstract, and less forgiving.

Influence on the Industry: The genome of Silent Service is visible in every submarine sim that followed. The compartmentalized command-screen interface became the standard. The idea of procedurally generated oceans for replayability was ahead of its time. The War Career concept directly inspired the campaign structures of later titles. Most directly, it paved the way for MicroProse’s own Silent Hunter series (starting in 1996) and can be seen as a spiritual ancestor to U-Boat (1994) and even modern indie efforts. It proved that a complex, historically-grounded vehicle simulation could find an audience on home computers, empowering MicroProse to pursue even more ambitious projects.

Conclusion: A Timeless Hull

Silent Service 1+2 is not a flawless artifact. The original’s limitations are starkly visible. The controls can feel archaic. The lack of 3D graphics and voice acting will deter those seeking sensory immersion. Yet, to judge it by modern standards is to miss its monumental achievement.

Verdict: Silent Service (1985) is a seminal, revolutionary prototype. It established the genre’s foundational language—the command screens, the tension between hunt and evasion, the procedural ocean. Silent Service II (1990) is a masterpiece of its era, a game that took that prototype and filled it with breathtaking systemic depth, historical richness, and a career mode that made every tonnage count. Together, they represent one of the most important developmental arcs in simulation history.

Their place in the canon is secure. They are the Rosetta Stone for submarine simulations. They teach us that compelling simulation is born from elegant rules, not graphical fidelity; that history is a powerful procedural engine; and that the deepest thrill comes not from explosions, but from the quiet, calculated moment before the torpedo leaves its tube, the console beeping, the ocean holding its breath. For the patient, historically curious player, diving into these schematics of the Pacific War remains one of gaming’s most profound and rewarding command experiences. They are not just classics; they are cornerstones.