It's not very often that my wife will sit down and play video games, especially two player versus kind of games. The only video games she enjoys are “Tile Match” on the GP2X, a block puzzle game (of which I have forgotten the name) on the DSi, and Wii Sports Bowling, which we play together. Apart from that, she's not interested. However, last night we played the newly released Sea Wolf II, for the C64, which she actually enjoyed. I did too. We even played it on the good ol' C128, which was great old-school fun.

Sea Wolf II is a remake/upgrade to the classic Commodore release “Sea Wolf” that was released in 1982. It's a very easy game to just pick up and start playing. The goal is to out-shoot your opponent, trying to sink as many ships as you can with your sub's torpedoes. The trick is, you can only shoot four torpedoes at a time before you have to pause to reload. So, if you don't manage your ammo with care, you can miss out on target opportunities. The one who sinks the most ships in a set amount of time, wins.

Unlike the original, if you don't have a player to compete against, you can go up against the game's AI, Captain Backstein. Don't be fooled, that Captain Backstein is a cunning opponent.

Anyway, we had a pretty good time playing a dozen or so rounds and even though my wife doesn't play shoot-em up style video games, she had a fair number of the wins, too! I'm going to have to get in some practice games before our next bout. However, this game really isn't a “shoot 'em up” but more of a head-to-head target shooting competition.

Go to my Library for a disk image to download if you want to give it a try for yourself. And below, is a short video I did so you can see some of the game-play. Don't mind the stutter at around the one minute mark. That's not the game, but my screen capture program.

This game is a fine example of how you can make a game that is fun to play, looks and sounds great, yet is not overly complicated in it's design or presentation. We still need games that can play on a stock C64 (or C128) with a simple datasette or disk drive. It's also a game that really makes me wish I had a working set of paddle controllers.

Seawolf II Library entry...

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