Eastern
Front is an important milestone. For
me personally, it was probably the game I liked most when I was a teenager and
made me want to design games rather than just play them. I don’t think it had a deep impact on the industry because of its
subject, but it is a forgotten classic.
Simple
UI – joystick, start button and space button only
Push-scrolled
map
Visual
feedback of orders given
Special
effects: colour, flashes, scenery changes in different seasons
Use
of sound and graphics for UI feedback and results feedback
Almost
no stats and no rules to remember
It’s an example of how new technology and careful UI design can transform a complicated, dull activity (playing a paper wargame) into entertainment. Chris said in his 1980 design diary: “Mostly, I thought about what it would be like to play the game. What will go through the head of a person playing my game? What will the person experience? What will he think and feel?” For me this is one of the most important lessons from this talk. The other is the importance of delight – for the user and the author.
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You'll need to download an Atari 800 emulator and system ROMs. There are several available but the one I used is here. There's a copy of the game's manual here. Finally, click here for a pretty comprehensive library of games. To run the game you have to load the .atr game image into one of the virtual disk drives and reboot the emulator.