Silent Service (video game)

Silent Service
Cover art by David Phillips
Developer(s)	MicroProse
Publisher(s)	MicroProse
Designer(s)	Sid Meier
Artist(s)	Michael O. Haire
Platform(s)	Amstrad CPC, Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, Apple IIGS, IBM PC, NES, TRS-80, ZX Spectrum
Release	1985
Genre(s)	Submarine simulator
Mode(s)	Single-player

Silent Service is a 1985 submarine simulator video game. It was designed by Sid Meier and published by MicroProse for various 8-bit home computers, and in 1987 for 16-bit systems like the Amiga. A NES port of Silent Service developed by Rare was released in 1989 by Konami in Europe and by Ultra Games in North America. The follow-up game, Silent Service II, was released in 1990.

Tommo Inc. purchased the rights to this game and digitally publishes it through its Retroism brand in 2015.

Silent Service is set in the Pacific Ocean during World War II, with the player assuming control of a United States submarine for various war patrols against Japanese shipping ("Silent Service" was a nickname for the US Navy's submarine force in the Pacific during World War II).

The game allows the player to choose when to attack and a whole range of realistic tactics are available, including the End Around as well as near invisibility at night (if the sub's profile is kept to a minimum). The game's realism was hampered by the simulation's inability to handle more than four projectiles at a time. This was particularly troublesome when battling multiple destroyers, since the submarine would not be able to fire if four torpedoes were already in the water.

The game accelerates real time when not in combat. Sid Meier described a number of key factors that influenced the design of the game: The size of the theater, the variety of tactical situations, and evolving technology, such as the use of surface radar and torpedoes that did or did not leave trails of bubbles on the surface—only simulations set after their real-life introduction had access to them. Tasks such as navigation, damage repair, and firing were compartmentalized into different screens to allow players access to a great deal of information, but also focus on the task at hand.