Month: July 2020
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Life in the Time of COVID-19: Ennui, Angst, and Other Frustrations
Well, Constant Reader, another weekend is upon us here in my corner of Florida. Right now it’s early afternoon here, and the temperature outside is 92 degrees Fahrenheit under mostly sunny skies; with humidity at 62% and a westerly breeze of 11 MPH, the heat index is 108 degrees Fahrenheit. If it wasn’t so beastly…
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Into the Deep in Steel Coffins: ‘Red Storm Rising’ & ‘Cold Waters’
Running Silent, Running Deep Back in the late Eighties and even into the early 1990s – even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, I loved to spend much of my downtime playing Cold War era military-themed computer games. At the time, I had two different computers: an Apple IIe, which was a gift from…
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‘Cold Waters’: Striving to Be a Good Sub Skipper!
Hi, Constant Reader! It’s morning here in my little corner of Florida on Wednesday, July 8, 2020; it’s the middle of the regular work week, and so far it looks like it’s going to be a hot and even rainy day. Right now it’s hot outside; the official temperature is 89˚F (32˚C), but the heat…
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Retro Review: ‘Silent Service II’ by MicroProse
In 1987, sometime after my uncle Sixto Diaz-Granados – my dad’s older brother – bought me my first home computer, I bought my first submarine simulation game, MicroProse Software’s Silent Service. This was a game designed by the legendary Sid Meier, who had (along with Lt. Col. William “Wild Bill” Stealey) co-founded MicroProse in 1982…
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Diving Deep Into ‘Cold Waters’: First Combat Missions!
As I continue to explore the many features of Cold Waters, the 2017 submarine simulation developed by the Australian game developer Killerfish Games, I have finally gone beyond Training and moved on to Single Mission combat mode. After three days of trying out most of the tutorial missions in the game – which its designers…
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Retro Review: ‘Red Storm Rising’ by MicroProse
If you’re a regular visitor to A Certain Point of View, Too, you might have read my posts about a new computer game that I’ve been playing over the past few days. It’s called Cold Waters, a game that puts you in command of a U.S. Navy nuclear-powered fast attack sub during a hypothetical Third…
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‘Cold Waters’: First Impressions
Although Cold Waters boasts sophisticated graphics and an immersive sound design that blends music, sound effects, and voice acting that is light-years beyond anything that Sid Meier and his design team at the old MicroProse could achieve in the late 1980s, there is a lot of Red Storm Rising in its cyber-DNA. They both put…
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Old Gamers Never Die: From ‘Red Storm Rising’ to ‘Cold Waters’
Back in the 1990s, when I first bought my first MS-DOS-based personal computer, I used to play many military-themed simulations and strategy games. Most of them were designed and published by MicroProse Software of Hunt Valley, MD, which was founded by Sid Meier and William “Wild Bill” Stealey in 1982. Although Sid Meier’s Civilization is…
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Random Thoughts & Musings for July 2, 2020, or: Finding Bits of Bliss in Troubled Times
Well, here we are on July 2, 2020, a few short days before the Fourth of July weekend and the fifth – or is it sixth?- month of the global pandemic caused by the spread of the novel coronavirus known as COVID-19. And because we live in a troubled and extremely divisive period exacerbated by…
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Music Album Review: ‘Superman: The Movie – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack’
Hi, there, Constant Reader! Well, here we are on the first day of July 2020, and in my corner of Florida all is tranquil at home on a hot early summer afternoon. Presently, the temperature outside is a sizzling 94˚F; with humidity at 56% and a westerly breeze of 11 mph, the heat index is…
A Certain Point of View, Too 