Close Assault (Atari 800)

From a time when the best graphics a computer game offered were on the front cover of the box, Avalon Hill's Close Assault offers a hybrid computer/board game experience by enclosing cardboard counters and a playing board. The result, per the manual, is a "visual impact... much greater than on even the best of computer graphics displays" while freeing for the processor, "a huge amount of limited resources" normally used to manage the graphical interface. Those resources instead are devoted to accounting for every soldier engaged in the scenario, and fulfilling a dream of the era's simulation board-gamers: realism in what you know and when you know it. In Close Assault, your opponent's units appear on the board only when they are spotted by yours, their morale is only evident by their behavior, and only your experience will tell you the odds of success. This is a far cry from the usual board simulation experience, where you could pour over combat success tables and footnoted modifiers to judge exactly where the chances break in your favor, and use the morale markers on your opponent's front line to decide where to push.