North & South! Strategy and the Wild West on NES

Among the folds of time and the pages of video game history, a small but brilliant gem managed to carve out a place for itself in an overcrowded genre of titles like war games, where strategy reigns supreme along with tactical acumen, with a title that was far more than just evocative: North & South It was released for the glorious, and never sufficiently praised, NES console, which needs no introduction.

Non ho scritto a caso il termine “fumettistico” perché l’opera di Infogrames, che molti di voi ricorderanno essere la casa madre che diede alla luce Alone in the Dark, deriva dalle pagine di una serie a fumetti di matrice belga dal titolo Les Tuniques Bleues, in italiano Le Giubbe Blu, nel quale si raccontano le vicende tragicomiche di un manipolo di soldati sgangherati e irriverenti.

Ed and it was precisely by drawing inspiration from the mood of the aforementioned comic that North & South found its happy interpretive key, giving the gameplay a fun and carefree hybrid touch, between the purely strategic and management dynamics of a war game and a series of ideas that streamline the cumbersome classic mechanics of the genre.

Come we know well, the American Civil War did not convey values of brotherhood, so let’s forget the egalité and liberté so praised by our cousins across the Alps: fortunately Infogrames immediately set aside any “serious” political-cultural implications, allowing the player to take command of one of the two factions in the field, so as to place them in a gaming context that actually recalls the turn-based nature of today’s board games: if you love board games with strategic overtones, but without the laboriousness of the usual Warcraft or the almost contemporary Command and Conquer, then North & South is really for you!

The deployment phases of your armies will be interspersed with sequences in which you will witness the result of your military choices, seasoned with that absurd humour that was an absolute hallmark in European comics published last century.

Union and Confederation battle each other with cannon fire and choices that will decree surrender or victory; of course, the game was designed so that the user could challenge both the computer and a friend, an option I highly recommend because it is thanks to this versus mode that North & South, in my view, shows its best side and fires its best shots, to stay on the war theme.

We will have three types of warlike force at our disposal; infantry and cavalry will be indispensable for the success of our campaign, but it is with artillery that we will have to deliver our relentless verdict against our opponents: the resource management and accumulation phase is fairly simple to master, and thanks to gold we will be able to improve our armies and bring ourselves a little closer to the much-desired final victory.

Prima I mentioned some ideas that streamline the gameplay and make it more accessible: I was obviously referring to that sort of minigame that you’ll find yourselves having to face when you go on the assault of an enemy fort, for example.

Yet, in my fondest memories of endless pitched battles with my friends from back then, what emerges is a healthy, harmless fun, where playing at war is, indeed, just a game that begins and ends inside a screen.