''Silent Service II'' is a submarine simulation game developed and published by

MicroProse MicroProse is an American video game publisher and developer founded by Bill Stealey, Sid Meier, and Andy Hollis in 1982. It developed and published numerous games, including starting the ''Civilization'' and '' X-COM'' series. Most of their inte ...

for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few oper ...

in 1990 and for the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore International, Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and sign ...

in 1991. It is a sequel to 1985's '' Silent Service'', also set in the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

Tommo Tommo Inc. is an American video game publisher based in City of Industry, California. Founded in 1990, Tommo started out as a small independent distributor of imported video games. Since 2006, Tommo also operates a publishing subsidiary, UFO In ...

purchased the rights to this game and digitally publishes it through its

Retroism Tommo Inc. is an American video game publisher based in City of Industry, California. Founded in 1990, Tommo started out as a small independent distributor of imported video games. Since 2006, Tommo also operates a publishing subsidiary, UFO In ...

brand in 2015.

Gameplay

''Silent Service II'' allows the player to choose either single scenarios (training, a single historical battle, or a single random encounter war patrol) or an extended war career. In the career mode, the player undertakes a number of consecutive patrols in the submarine, meeting other ships or convoys in unscripted encounters generated by the game. The player is able to select a home port and a patrol area on a map of the Pacific Ocean, and time acceleration allowed the submarine to move quickly to the chosen area. The length of each patrol is limited by the submarine's available fuel, but a typical war career can still take several hours of play time to complete. Common encounters involve the detection of a merchant ship or convoy, with the player determining whether and how to attack. On other occasions the player may face sudden detection by warships and be forced to act quickly to escape. Several different viewpoints are available, including the

bridge A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...

, the

periscope A periscope is an instrument for observation over, around or through an object, obstacle or condition that prevents direct line-of-sight observation from an observer's current position. In its simplest form, it consists of an outer case with ...

(usable either submerged or surfaced), the navigation area with the map, and internal status displays. Other ships are displayed as sprites in the bridge or periscope views. The MS-DOS version of the game uses up to 256 colors.

Reception

Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American computer game magazine published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 1993. It expanded greatly through t ...

'' praised ''Silent Service II'', citing its excellent graphics, "amazing"

sound card A sound card (also known as an audio card) is an internal expansion card that provides input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under the control of computer programs. The term ''sound card'' is also applied to external au ...

audio, and seven accurate submarine types. It concluded that the game "teaches historical lessons worthy of a graduate seminar in modern American history" while exciting as "a mammoth roller-coaster". 1991 and 1993 surveys of strategy and war games in that magazine gave it four and a half stars out of five.

References

External links

''Silent Service II'' PC manual
* {{moby game, id=/silent-service-ii, name=''Silent Service II'' 1990 video games Amiga games Atari ST games DOS games Games commercially released with DOSBox Pacific War video games Single-player video games Submarine simulation video games MicroProse games Video game sequels Video games developed in the United States Video games set in Asia Video games set in Oceania Video games scored by Jeff Briggs World War II video games Tommo games