[James Langham]

Originally Posted by raketenjagdpanzer

I remember when my Brother-in-law who was a huge computer wargamer (seriously, the guy would spend a day, then a night, then the following day designing stuff in Wargame Construction Set from SSI, then invite me over to play his Cosmic Balance scenarios he'd written on his Atari 800XL) bought the 1e boxed set to build a "Door" or do Play-by-posts for his BBS he ran in like '87 or so (this was all prior to Gorbachev, Perestroika, etc.; not even the most optimistic folks dared whisper that in a mere 25 months the USSR would be out of business as a world power), and as we looked through the contents of the boxed set, he said to me, somberly "You know...this is how it could all really go down."

It's a little ridiculous to consider now, but if in 1985 you'd written a game about the distant year 2012 and things called iphones, smart TVs, a defunct Soviet Union, a-capitalist-in-all-but-name PRC, the US being in hock to said China, the literal vanishing of Japan as a world financial power, etc. would it have looked more or less plausible than the 40+ years-in-coming, seemingly inevitable war between the US and USSR.

Hell, I knew guys who were in the military in 1990 who were certain the USSR was going to use build-up in Saudi Arabia for the Gulf War as causus belli and jump off due to the US attacking an ostensible ally...go fig!

Don't forget the worry as the Wall came down that it could trigger WW3 - the British Army at least went onto alert.