Command HQ

I keep a short list of DOS-era strategy games that I genuinely believe would survive a modern rerelease with minimal changes, and Command HQ sits near the top of it. Designed by Danielle Bunten Berry and published by MicroProse in 1990, this is a real-time global conquest wargame that strips the genre to its essential decisions: where to push, what to build, when to spend and when to hoard. The fact that it shaped the DNA of Dune II and the original Command and Conquer is not just trivia. You can feel the lineage in every resource-allocation choice. The scenario structure is the first thing that earns respect. Five eras, each mechanically distinct. The 1918 scenario gives you only land and sea units, keeping things tight and readable. Jump to 1942 and air units, carriers, and tanks enter the picture, with terrain effects that matter: tanks blitz but infantry entrenches, paratroopers exist, flanking pays off. Move into the 1986 and beyond tiers and the game adds oil management, satellite reconnaissance, foreign aid, nuclear strikes, and diplomacy-via-cash to sway neutral cities. Each era is effectively a different game stacked inside the same interface. The difficulty curve is honest rather than punishing; five AI difficulty levels give newcomers genuine room to learn before the computer starts reading your intentions. The strategic layer is deliberately slim by modern standards, and that is a feature, not a limitation. Bunten's entire design philosophy was about making the decisions matter without drowning the player in menus. Capturing capital cities wins the match, but the path there forces constant prioritization: do you spend on submarines to cut Atlantic supply lines, or concentrate money on panzer production for an Eastern push? In the WW3 era, a poorly timed nuclear strike can trigger nuclear winter and hand the win to your opponent, which is a built-in check on lazy aggression. The AI is competent enough to punish overextension, though a skilled human opponent across the original modem link (or hot-seat at game speed zero, which toggles the real-time flow into pseudo-turn alternation) was always the intended endgame. Note that broadband multiplayer is not supported; the original modem architecture has no modern equivalent in this release, so hot-seat is your practical two-player option. Where the game ages is predictable: the graphics are functional 1990 DOS-era top-down, the scenario variety is fixed to the five provided eras plus a custom layout editor, and there is no tutorial in the contemporary sense. The manual does the teaching. Players coming from modern RTS titles expecting a campaign structure or unit micro will find the scope shockingly small. This is a one-on-one world domination game with no factions, no tech trees, and no unit unlocks beyond what the era grants automatically. Whether that reads as elegant restraint or frustrating limitation depends entirely on your appetite for distilled design. For strategy fans who care about design history, Command HQ is a serious piece of work. It earned Computer Gaming World's Wargame of the Year in 1991 for genuine reasons, and its 97% positive rating on Steam across 71 reviews suggests the people buying it today know exactly what they are getting. Approach it as a tight, fast wargame with real decision weight per era, not as a historical simulation, and it holds up.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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