Some games are just too bad to be remembered. Some others are truly milestones of gaming history. But what about the games that are both?

Let's meet one of them, quickly passing the real-time strategy timeline, starting from far far away.

The american "Commercial Wireless and Development Company" founded in 1911 eventually became Magnavox in 1917. That Magnavox that 60 years later produced the Odyssey, the first home videogame console.
Its successor, the Odyssey2, was unluckly launched in 1978 - a year dominated by the Atari 2600 and Mattel Intellivision that made the Odyssey2 a distant third in the market.

One of the reasons of its failure in the US was the lack of third-party support: after the launch there were just a bunch of games available and most of them made by a single person, Ed Averett of Intel as hire programmer, in the next 4 years. In his feverish attempt to fill the market with brand new games, the unexpected was inevitable.

One of his games was War of Nerves! (1979), a two players only game about two robot armies (Northwestonia and Southeasternia) battling each other. You move your faction general and instruct your soldiers on how to reach the enemy general and win the war.

Fast forward.

On the other side of the gaming history, we have the whole MOBA RTS sub-genre in which - courtesy of our buddy Wikipedia - "a player controls a single character in a team who compete versus another team of players. The objective is to destroy the opposing team's main structure with the assistance of periodically spawned computer-controlled units that march forward along set paths".

The Wikipedia MOBA page reports the Sega's Herzog Zwei (1989) as the genre parent... so where is our War of Nerves!? The answer is probably within the Herzog Zwei Wikipedia page: marked as a mediocre game in the US, it has been labelled as an innovative RTS in retrospective reviews, praised for its innovativity.

War of Nerves! was probably a misunderstood game on a forgettable platform and, probably, it wasn't the best you could play in 80s - even in retrospectives. And yet, it was a precursor of an entire game genre.

In human history, shit like this happens.

Plot!

Planet Purpalia, 2141. After centuries of searching, a far uncontaminated planet rich of resources has been finally found. Your small troop of colonizers has been sent from Earth in order to begin the extractions. Earth is a broken rock in space. You are the only hope for humanity.
Long story short, command your units, reach each scenario goal and save humanity!

Move the pointer near the game screen edges for scrolling around the map. Select a unit for showing the commands menu on the lower part of the screen. Select an already selected unit for adding all the nearby units to the current selection - more commands will possibly stack up. Drag and drop the lower part of any selected unit for issuing a movement command to movable units. Units will automatically attack nearby enemies with their main weapon but special weapons and actions can be triggered selecting the command menu buttons. Good luck!

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Install / Add to home View game sources ...or play it online below!