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

in 1990 and for the Amiga 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 contin ...

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 vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

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 I ...

purchased the rights to this game and digitally publishes it through its Retroism 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'' 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 audio ...

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