Military Madness/Nectaris is a classic TBS hailing all the way back from 1989... It's design is very similar to a lot of similiar TBS type games where you command military vehicles (such as Famicom Wars, Conflict, etc) However this HuCard TG-16 gem shines with it's clever ideas and gimmicks for trying to get edge for your units as well as the look and sound. MM, is a fairly nice looking game for the time it was made and especially when compared to similar games of this type. Battle animations are animated and show lots of tanks rolling up and then firing. Aircraft have moving missiles that move towards targets, etc. The sounds and music are fairly chippy and similar to the other kinda stuff i've heard through HuCard games. Player and enemies have themes that change on how well the battle is going for (or against!) you, and there are some other different themes at different points in your campaign.

The campaign itself is purely mission based, and there is no real progress in that everything is tied to the battles itself. Progress is not saved in the game which instead features a somewhat humorous password system that names each battle names similar to what you might expect of actual military operations. In the beginning, the game is way easy: You both have far more units than the enemy, and the AI is bad, but this doesnt last long! by the halfway point of the game, it started to become a real challenge with each mission taking a full evening to tackle and figure out how to win.

The missions themselves are pretty fun. Once the game steps it up a bit, each mission plays out like a kind of puzzle, and you (generally it would seem) are going to have to find a particular weakness or vulnerability with which to exploit in order to win. It might be a lack of a certain kind of unit (proper aircraft) or the fact you have one more of those units than they do... but often its jus the lay of the land and you eventually realize there is a route you can take to reach a factory/city first/faster than the AI, or there is a way you can sneak around them to conquer their prison camp/base. Figuring out whatever it is in each mission is quite satisfying.

I have a bit mixed feelings on some of the strategy in this game and how it is designed. I tend to want to wipe out all enemies resulting in a proper victory but the game really leans towards a 'cheap' victory where you just load up a infantry unit in a transport an send it to their prison camp/base at some point. The AI is very good at doing this, even when they make other mistakes they do not miscalculate the distance or moves it will take to conquer your base for a decisive victory. You also do not produce units in this game but start out with a force, have some units holed up in a 'factory-city' and can acquire more units if you are first to invade and conquer a factory-city with your infantry. This means of acquiring units is fun, but it's also a bit of a curve-ball.

This game tends to have a lot of the usual tactical considerations with games of this sort: some terrain offering defense bonuses, new units trained/produced/whatever, certain units being best used against other units, and so on. But The clever and unique component of this is how you can surround enemy units to lower their defense! (Some units in this game are monstrously large tanks that are simply too tough to engage without doing this) and if you surround your own units or cluster them together (in say, a triad on the hex grid) you can boost the defense of all touching units. you also have other nice things like indirect (ranged) fire from your artillery to help break up entrenched units.

Also, there are quite a bit of units, about 7 tanks or so, i think with slightly different stats.

In the end this is a challenging and addicting game with a lot of missions in it that play out like drawn out puzzles, has a diverse range of units for you to manage trying to send them back to base (to heal in a single turn) and the battles get difficult quite quickly and you resort to strategy and lack sufficient forces of your rival AI.

been on my radar for years and i do feel it's a must-play if you like games in this genre, as its pretty impressive for an early title and makes for a nice game on the TG-16

Unfortunately the games difficulty goes up quite fast and it's a real test of patience in the second half of the game. I wouldn't quite call it tedious but after probably 30-40 hours in and I find it's cranking it up over the halfway point its delivered a sort of Krusty's Super Fun House kind of 'oh no there's more?' kind of reaction.

I've backlogged this and as much as I want to complete it, i dont know if I'll ever tackle it. I can see this being on of those games that lasted people a very very long time back in the day. and you got games like that for those reasons.. it's definitely not something most people are going to complete in one week.