Carrier Command 2... was announced on 15th Dec 2020 by MicroProse. 

Now a lot of the modern kids wont know what this game is unless they played the poorly executed Carrier Command: Gaea Mission which was a remake of the original by Bohemia Interactive on the PS3/360/PC in 2008.

Carrier Command released in 1988 and was a masterpiece of gaming engineering in its day. Created on the Commodore 64, Atari ST and Amiga PCs, it was one of if not the most ambition game ever made on release. Made by Rainbird, a company no longer in existence and published by MicroProse. MicroProse sprung out of no where and announced the sequel last year. For those not knowing who MicroProse is, they were the company that started the Civilization and X-Com series and specialized in Strategy and Simulations in their prime days.

What is Carrier Command and why is it ambition and revolutionary? 

In the days of limited hardware, Carrier Command pushed the envelope of open world games. You have one big open world filled with many islands that you are meant to visit and either capture or destroy. It started you out at 1 Island and your enemy Carrier at another, sitting on different sides of the map. The object is simply, destroy the enemy Carrier. Now this is a full simulation game meaning you have to deal with resources like Fuel, Repairs and building Units and supplying them etc. Traveling from Island to Island can take many minutes.

You can plant defensive mines in the water, your Carrier has a Giant Turret, a Repair system and more. You can choose to sail to an Island unmanned or go to an enemy island and expect a fight. You can create Mining, Production and Defense islands in the game. For example is you build a Defense Island, it will start off weak as you have to wait for it to be developed, once developed, its Defenses will change from Weak to Strong to Very Strong depending how long the island has developed for. All islands have to build up and nothing is instant. So attacking a undeveloped island will increase your chances. Each Carrier also has a number of compartments, like Engines, Hull, Turrets, Docking bays etc. Every square in the image below is a compartment that can be damaged.

You have a choice of Air and Sea combat vehicles. Air (Manta) is great at attacking defenses on an island and Sea (Walrus) which are the Units used to carry the Island Bombs and Base creator items, however they can also be equip with weapons if need be. Pictures below/  

Reception: Carrier Command was named the 56th best computer game ever by PC Gamer UK in 1997. The editors wrote that it "packs more flight-sim, sea-sim and tank-sim action and strategy than a dozen of your so-called CD-ROM games could manage in a million or more megabytes.

For comparisons sake and for those interested, here is the original game on the Atari ST below. Keep in mind that this game was created on a 720kb floppy disk.

I could go on forever about this game, i was incredibly shocked to see it in the Steam Store waiting release. I am very excited and knowing MicroProse is behind the project has me excited. Either way, it's nice to see an old legend return.

Oh and i still own my copy.

Yes I have this game and other great Rainbird games like Midwinter, I still have a soft spot for 8 and 16 bit gaming and still own an Amiga. and wish today's gamers could have experienced gaming when it was fresh.

They were definitely different times. These games are so old now and unfortunately its games like Carrier Command are forgotten relics of there time rather than being Classics. The Amiga and Atari ST housed some amazing video games and its obviously a Nostalgia feeling being brought back to life than a game ready to set the bar high. Its an unpopular opinion today however to those who were brought up around these games will remember what these games did to the industry back in the day which has what helped evolve the industry.

Bloody hell, now that's some blast from the past - I've spent so much time with it back in days on Amiga.

I loved Carrier Command back in the day.

But Midwinter, now that was an exceptional game. I'd love to see a proper remake.

I never played Midwinter, i might have to check out some gameplay footage of it.

Do so through the lense of other games from that era and let us know your thoughts.

So i checked out some gameplay of Midwinter, its definitely quite innovative and more advanced however it did come out 1 year after Carrier Command. The guys playing the game on Youtube didn't do the game any justice however definitely a game i would have love to try out in its day. Looks quite good once you know how to play it.

I remember back in the day cause I spent many hours on Midwinter.

First, the huge booklet. Iirc there was a full 30 pages of background story. Because a meteorite hit earth, diamond dust effect caused Earth climate to change to a ice age in a matter of years.

Midwinter is supposed to be the Acore Island, but imagine the ocean have lost 100meters height. The story of Midwinter start roughly 100 years after the meteorite hit earth and the remnant of Humanity start to strive on this island. Geothermal plants and radios can be found, and factories...

You are Captain John Stark (heard that name somwhere) and you're the chief of the militia of Midwinter. All radios are shut down and Stark quickly finds out a force led by General Masters. You have just your skis, and a rifle, and you're chased by an army coming from the southern east of the map. Your task is to form a resistance force with contacts, other settlers. Those are many, but you can only recruit them if you're in good standing. For example, Stark can recruit a young girl, who is the only one who can recruit a geothermal engineer. You can use your skii, different types of snowcars, you can fly in a hang glider...

You can play in real time, first person style all the character in your party for two game hours. Some can be skiing, some can be resting, some can just stay in a settlement or even drive together in a snowcar. You have several victory conditions. Destroy the General Masters hq, take all 3 radios to instantly recruit everyone on the map, or take control  of the 42 geothermal plants on the map.

The game can be really hard, nigh impossible by adding mortars and bombers. Basically, you're in the middle of nowhere happily skiing, then a plane comes (recon). If you don't shoot it, mortars will shoot your location. Or bombers comes and bom you to death.

Once injured (from trips, bombs, mortars, enemy snocats missiles, believe me you can fall really easily and it's your main source of danger), it is quite difficult to be healed if you're alone. 

I remember beating it twice, but it took me like two months my first real try, and I had deactivated mortars and bombers. Recruiting ppl and organising your two hours time was really fun. Fighting in snowcars against enemy battalion was really hard and you got injured real fast. However, moviong in the snow, trying to move around enemy position was super fun. 

This game was wayy ahead of its time.

Wow, surprised by this announcement. This is very good news.