Age of Rifles 1996

I asked some grognards on the internet a few weeks ago for old wargames recommendations. The one most mentioned was Wargame Construction Set III Age of Rifles (Norm Koger, SSI, 1996). After finding some old reviews I decided it looked like a game I would almost certainly enjoy, so I ordered a used copy from someone on eBay. While waiting for it to arrive I downloaded the free demo and spent a few late nights playing the two small demo scenarios. Typing this just as I have installed the full version of the game in dosbox and managed to patch it to version 1.4 that is supposedly the latest official patch. It looks fantastic and I am happy to have it, for real, in a box, with a printed manual.

There was a thriving community around this game for several years after its release, and a fairly active Yahoo Group. The latter is of course gone now since Yahoo killed all groups a few years ago, but I managed to get an archive of it. The old fan websites are mostly gone, but several are on archive.org, including hundreds of fan-made scenarios. The only thing missing is the official expansion CDROM. I will probably have to find that as well eventually. But maybe slow down a bit and see if the game is as good as I think it is before spending even more money.

=> the designer's Age of Rifles page | Age of Rifles on Wikipedia | Rock Paper Shotgun review from 2016 | Computer Gaming World issue 148 review | archive of official home page in late 1996 | GOG wishlist entry | Moby Gamess screenshots

UPDATE 2024: GOG has published all three Wargame Construction Set games now, including Age of Rifles. Looks like it has all the patches applied, and even includes the expansion CDROM contents (that I did not have). I instantly bought all three games and guess I will be playing the GOG version in the future.

tags: #games #dos

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