I know this might be hard to believe from the comfort of 2024, but there used to be a big, competitive market for hardcore naval strategy games on the PC. Harpoon was the most popular of these games, and–I swear I am not making this up–back in the 90s it used to have prominent features in mainstream games mags, and even posters in video game stores.
Harpoon was also a game that looked like this:
A series that has continued through the 2000s to look pretty much like this, Harpoon is a strategy franchise in the most traditional grognardy sense, forgoing any visual flair for the raw, weighty pleasures of math and authenticity. If other video games use graphics as a means of representing code and numbers, Harpoon--like other classics like Gary Grigsby's War in the East--only really cares about the numbers. If you have ever complained about a Paradox game being cold and unwieldy, you don't know shit. You are a small baby, a sweet child of summer.
Harpoon, with its accounting software-like interface and myriad of systems it is trying to simulate, was a very tough nut to crack, but once a certain type of person willing to put in the work could crack it, it was by all accounts great (I tried, repeatedly, but was never that person.). Like I said, people still play the series today! So it's maybe not too surprising to hear that Microprose, exactly the kind of publisher who you would expect to bring Harpoon back in 2024, is bringing Harpoon back.
The publisher this week announced a re-release of a re-release of a re-release of the original 1989 Harpoon, which was remade in 1994 as Harpoon Classic then again in 1997 as this game, the one that's coming to Steam next month, Harpoon 97. The promo material says it features "new displays, updated scenarios, and a more intuitive interface", but I'm not sure if those are just the republished selling points from the 1997 press release, because take a look at Harpoon 97's trailer:
I must stress here that this is fine! Actually it's more than fine, it's expected: this is what this series and this genre looks like, whether you like it or not, and it would be really weird to play a Harpoon game and suddenly find yourself confronted with "graphics". Like 2023's Rule The Waves 3 (see below), there's a certain throwback charm to this, and the people who will actually be spending money on this game wouldn't have it any other way.
(Besides, anyone who does want to play a modern naval combat game with graphics can just buy one of Microprose's other upcoming releases, Sea Power.)
I'm excited for this! At least I am, conceptually! I'm sure I will once again try to play this game and once again fail to understand or enjoy it, but for me, that's beside the point. The point here is that Microprose is about to release something that people under the age of 25 wouldn't even think qualifies as a video game, where modern ideas like "art style" and "user experience" are nowhere to be found, and loads of people will enjoy it regardless. I think that fucking rules.
