U-boat Games

This page deal with Computer simulations related to the U-boat War of WWII.

Silent Hunter V (2010)

Silent Hunter returns its focus to the U-boats. This game looks great, with its new engine and heavily revised graphics from Silent Hunter 3 - if you skipped over SH 4.

The main problem with this game is the copy-protection scheme used by Ubisoft for this game. In order to play you not only have to be connected to the Internet but also connected to the Ubisoft servers. I really don't like this method at all.

Official site: Silent Hunter V

Developer: Ubisoft

Silent Hunter IV (March 2007)

Silent Hunter IV Yet another exciting installment of this great submarine franchise. Completely wrong ocean for German U-boat play but instead we have the American submarines of WWII along with those extremely tempting japanese superbattleships!

Gonna grab this one asap and check it out - looks wonderful from what I've seen. Seems to be a vastly improved engine from the Silent Hunter III of 2005 which looked very nice itself.

Buy it online!
You can purchase it from the following sources:
Amazon.com (about $47.99)

Official site: Silent Hunter IV

Developer: Ubisoft

Silent Hunter III (2005)

Silent Hunter III March 18 2005 - Finally the long awaited sequel to the fun game Silent Hunter II has arrived.

We'll do a review of this game within few days if all goes well.

Buy it online!
You can purchase it from the following sources:
Amazon.com (about $19.95)
Amazon.de (about EUR 10,00)

Official site: Silent Hunter III

Developer: Ubisoft

Silent Hunter II (2001)

A very exiting new game that was released in 2001. This is the follow-up to the successful Silent Hunter of 1996. That game dealt with the US Submarines in the Pacific during WWII, The Silent Service. This one will be much more interesting, both much more advanced technically and also about the field that interests us the most, U-boats! :)

Also, in this game you can play against people who have the Destroyer Command game!

This game includes support for Direct3D and OpenGL and looks very nice!

Official site: Silent Hunter II

Developer: SSI

Check out the SH2 Fleet page devoted to this game

Fighting Steel (1999)

This one was launched in the middle of 1999. It's a strategic simulation of a great promise.

You can have battleships slugging it out on the surface in many different scenarios.

One of the most interesting promises of this game is a friendly-fire possibility, this was a real problem in WWII and many ships were lost under those circumstances.

Official site: Fighting Steel

Developer: SSI


Iron Wolves - Internet multiplayer game

I've not played this game myself (I have tried but the connections failed) but this one seems quite popular indeed. As an Internet-based game it's of course bound by those limitations, possible slow connection, refreshes etc.

You can learn more about this game here



Aces of the Deep

This is of course the most recent U-boat simulation in release. An excellent game all around but since its release in 1995 simulations and graphics technology have taken rather large leaps. I've been looking forward to a modernized version of this game for a long time. After all, I sank over 2 million tons of shipping at 100% difficulty settings during my 1939-1945 career :)

There was another version of this game called Command: Aces of the Deep. This one was the same game but included an expansion disk (also available seperately) and the jewel: Interviews with men like Topp and Hardegen on the CD. Another item included in the CD version was speech-recognition, it could make you appear very strange (as in padded-room strange) shouting at your computer in German :)

This game would be a tough one to locate except in your local software store and then probably in the sales bin.

You will be pleased to know that you can order Aces of the Deep from Sierra on line (www.Sierra.com) as part of the Aces Collection a new package for about $26 US. Unlike the old issue which was DOS based and not Windows compatable, this will run on Windows '95 and Windows '98.

Developer: Sierra

Wolfpack

This one was an old DOS-based game (1993) that I played for weeks, nice and simple game. You could control either the U-boat Wolfpack or the convoy escorts. That was its main feature, each and every ship could be controlled at your ease.


This destroyer is about to be surprised!

Silent Service II

This oldie came on three 5.25" diskettes. It is called Silent Service II by MicroProse. This game was ahead of its time when produced. It offers a variety of boats (U.S. only, however) and very good graphics. The most die hard would be impressed by the attention to detail placed in the game engine back in 1991.

Developer: MicroProse

Gato Submarine Battle Simulation

Wizardworks 1992 (copyright 1987)
This one comes on a 5.25" floppy disk.


The First U-boat Game?

Here below is a photo of what surely must be the first U-boat game, albeit not a computer-based one. This one, Der kleine U-Boot-Kommandant, was published in 1940 and was of course inspired by U-47's successful attack on the British Home Fleet at Scapa Flow.


Now this must really be the first U-boat game...

Unsere U-boote, thought to date from 1915.

U-boat 26

This is a game for the Commodore 64/128, but if you have an emulator you can play it on your PC as well. Your U-boat attempts to torpedo carriers and destroyers from beneath the surface while avoiding depth charges and mines. A simple, shoot 'em up kind of game. Order for free from the Cocosoft Solutions Commodore 64 Request Site.

Submarine

A board game from Avalon Hill. This war game consists of a coordinate grid board, cardboard counters representing U-boats and surface vessels, log charts and various historical scenarios. Very educational and requiring some strategy, as moves must be plotted secretly by opponents several rounds ahead, and players must consider their depth, speed, and weapons capabilities which are calculated to match those of the actual vessels and weapons.

Although Avalon Hill is no longer in business, this game can be found for sale at the following web sites.

Earthsea's Avalon Hill Game Page, among other places.

U-boat and Drumbeat

Both these Macintosh computer games are available from Deadly Games.

U-boat is a realtime simulation of the U-boat war from 1939 to mid-1940. Winner of Computer Game Review's Golden Triad Award.


Drumbeat, also a realtime simulation, is the sequel to U-boat; the 1942 scenario uses a Type IXB, and takes place off the coasts of Europe, the US, and Caribbean islands.

Grey Wolf, Hunter of the North Atlantic

One of Diversions Software's first releases. They describe it as a simple World War II U-boat simulation with an arcade flavor. Available from Sofsource.




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