Introduction

Know what I love? Strategy games. Know what great strategy game hasn't gotten an LP?

This one. I'm gonna go ahead and change that.

Military Madness was one of the best damn impulse buys I ever made. I discovered it on the Virtual Console, and I'm glad I did, because this is a great game that nearly fell through the cracks. It's a turn-based wargame in the vein of Advance Wars, and it's the earliest such game I can think of. Military Madness, released in 1988 by NEC/Hudson Soft, was a great strategy game that was ahead of its time. Sadly, it didn't get much attention because it was only released on the Turbografx-16. It had some sequels and formed a franchise called the Nectaris series (named after the Mare Nectaris region of the moon, where the bulk of it takes place), but for the most part they didn't offer much new and faded into obscurity with their predecessor.

Gameplay is straightforward: There's a series of sixteen missions you play in order. In each mission, your army and the enemy army get a headquarters and some units and blow each other up until either one side's dead or has its headquarters captured. Unlike Advance Wars, however, there's no way to build units, although you can capture weapons from unoccupied or enemy factories - more on this when it comes. We'll also have to worry about zones of control, supporting fire, and encirclement, and by "worry about", I mean "exploit for all they're worth if we want to win."

Hey, I like Military Madness and are you gonna do hard mode?

Possibly. I never actually managed to beat it

but if the thread proves popular enough I may see how far I can get into it.

Units:

Infantry

Charlie: It's slow and can't fight to save its life. Should be capturing factories and headquarters, and pretty much nothing else.

Kilroy: A Charlie with a rocket launcher, which means it can actually fight. Its defense is still horrible, though, so we'll limit its role to supporting fire.

Panther: A Charlie with a motorcycle. It can get to factories and headquarters faster to capture them, but still dies if a combat unit looks at it funny.

Tanks

Bison: It's a standard light tank, with all you'd expect from one. It's fast, it's got decent attack, and its armor is reasonably high. It doesn't excel at anything, but at the same time it has no real weaknesses.

Slagger: The Axis' answer to the Bison, this tank has a bit more defense and higher movement than its counterpart. It can gain ground quickly, but isn't powerful enough to hold it if enemy tanks attack it in force.

Grizzly: A heavy tank. It moves very slowly, but it has good defense and is among the hardest-hitting units in the game. Best used to support so you can take advantage of its firepower without it getting hit, but it has enough defense to easily survive in combat.

Polar: Another heavy tank. While the Grizzly has high defense and sky-high attack, this unit has sky-high defense and high attack. The Polar can give and take a lot of damage, so it's a perfect fit to hold the line.

Titan: A medium tank. It's a bit faster than the Grizzly and Polar, but doesn't have quite the armor of either. The Axis usually gets them.

Lenet: It's a Bison, but worse at everything. Since you're stuck with it anyway, you can get at least some use out of it, but it's still not something you want in your roster.

Giant: It's tied with other units for both the highest ground attack and highest defense in the game, and it has a decent enough air attack to threaten bombers too. The catch is that it moves two hexes per turn, and that's on smooth terrain.

Artillery

Hadrian: It has long range, so it can sit quite comfortably behind our lines and soften up enemy units in front. It isn't particularly powerful, so it can't devastate tank units, but it can weaken them and keep buggies away to ease the pressure on the frontline.

Octopus: It has slightly less reach than the Hadrian, but it hits a lot harder. Unlike the Hadrian, it has the firepower to wreck tank units, so that's what it should be doing.

Atlas: A heavy artillery gun. It can't move, but it has so much range that if you deploy it in the right spot, it doesn't really need to. Have it attack the highest-priority ground unit in range and watch it smash it to pieces.

Buggies

Rabbit: It's fast and has high attack, but low defense. Since it can move after attacking, it's a very useful unit. After a fight it can zip back to relative safety, or into a factory if it's taken too much damage.

Lynx: An odd little unit. It has a very weak air attack, but its notable feature is its ground attack. It can hit ground targets 2 hexes away, and only 2 hexes away, for modest damage. It's fast and can move after attacking, so it should rarely be in danger.

Air Defense

Seeker: An anti-air gun. It does a decent job of hitting air units, although it will probably lose against a Hunter. It can hit ground units decently hard, too, but not hard enough that it should be going head-to-head with tanks.

Hawkeye: A surface-to-air missile unit. Its long range and high attack power mean it can blow apart air units without fear of retaliation, making it one of the few units that can effectively fight the Hunter.

Fighters/Bombers

Eagle: A bomber. It hits ground units hard, and for the most part those ground units can't hit back. Its armor is paper thin and its anti-air gun is weak, though, so it needs to stay well away from fighters.

Falcon: A fighter. It's the fastest unit and has the highest air attack, so it does its job well. It has no ground attack at all, so we'll need to keep it away from Seekers and Hawkeyes.

Hunter: The best unit in the game that, sadly, only the AI ever seems to get. The Hunter is an absolute monster. It's almost as fast as the Falcon, has the firepower and armor of a Grizzly, and since it can fly very few weapons are effective against it. We'll need to make destroying any enemy Hunters a top priority.

Transports

Mule: Can transport infantry and mines. Decently fast, but slows down a lot on rough terrain. Has very little armor and a peashooter for a weapon.

Pelican: A fast, flying transport that can carry any ground unit. Completely unarmed and very fragile, not that this leaves it much worse off than the Mule. This is very useful for getting your mines, heavy artillery, and infantry where they need to be quickly, so be careful with it.

Other

Trigger: A mine. The bad news is, this doesn't mean it stays hidden until it blows up in the enemy's face. Instead, it has ridiculously high defense, and its purpose is to stop the enemy advance cold until they can clear it.

The Let's Play Archive

Military Madness

by Polybius91

Introduction

Table of Contents

Units: