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Many of the war games released for computers are based on real historical incidents. But how accurate are the games? C&VG decided to put The Bulge: The Battle For Antwerp to the test.

We asked Dr Stephen Badsey, formerly of the Imperial War Museum and now working as a researcher on the BBC's "Soldiers" series, to give his expert opinion.

The Bulge, based on the Ardennes in 1944, is less than halfway to being a good wargame - it is up to the player to supply the other half.

While, as Argus rightly say, the "traditional wargame sometimes puts you in the position of a god rather than a Field Marshall" [sic - their booklet has a number of spelling errors] the computer program can conceal information from the players in the same realistic "fog of war" which surrounded real commanders. The drawback is that, whereas a non-computer wargame can be altered or improvised, the finished program on tape cannot be improved upon by the player - it must be perfect.

This is what Argus claim to have done with The Bulge, and sadly they have not delivered. The fundamental problem is one of game construction. Often, as with The Bulge, a program mechanism is written first and applied to an historical event later. What is far more difficult is to find out what happened in the historical event, isolate those points which made it different from any other event, and find mechanisms to bring this out for the player.

The Ardennes offensive was launched through Hitler's belief that the Anglo-American-Russian alliance was fundamentally unstable. Its object was to drive through to the coast at Antwerp, cutting off the British and Canadian forces which would then (somehow) be destroyed. The Western Allies would collapse, negotiate a separate peace, and leave Germany free to deal with Russia alone. The Bulge's briefing booklet describes this plan as "sound, although ambitious". No senior commander on either side thought so.

The Germans rapidly modified Hitler's masterplan, at first tactitly and then openly, into the "Small Solution", a double envelopment of American forces east of the River Meuse, which was the best they could hope to achieve.

Their problems were first the secret assembly and supplying of even armoured and thirteen infantry divisions from an army short of fuel and equipment and then how to overcome the powerful artillery and air force which the Americans used to compensate for their inferior infantry and armour. The chief American problem was in identifying the nature of the German threat.

The main reason for the initial surprise and success of the offensive was that it simply did not make sense as an operation of war.

It was bound to fail, and it did, General Patton at least wanted to offer no defence to the first German penetration, letting them over-extend and improving the American chance of destroying them completely.

The Bulge, in which the player takes either side against the computer - or another player with linked Spectrums - replicates the initial surprise by permitting the Allies no initial orders for their forces, and thereafter places, rightly, its greatest stress on the intelligence battle, encouraging the player to interpret its brief reports and issue orders accordingly.

Unfortunately, the player is told far too much. Whereas the real battle was fought in a state of intelligence confusion, the game provides the player with the complete order of battle, including re-inforcements, for both sides, while in its course the name, strength and status of both friendly and enemy units is automatically and accurately given when desired.

Even worse, the German player is told that "if the fuel depot at Spat" [sic again, and it was not at Spa but near La Gleize] is not captured all German units move and fight at half strength". In fact Kampfgruppe Peiper, which nearly stumbled on the depot was unaware of its existence throughout the battle. Moreover, had the fuel fallen into German hands it could not easily have been distributed to their entire force.

In the real battle of the Bulge - like every other battle - units got lost, reported enemy where there were none, exaggerated or underestimated their own peril, blundered into each other, were shot at by their own side and turned up in exactly the right place by purest accident. None of this happens in The Bulge.

At the same time, the player is told too little of what a real general would know. Two simultaneous levels of command are offered. A strategic map shows the area from the German frontier to the River Meuse (the Sambre in the booklet), approximately the operational area of the U.S. First Army, on which units of both sides are shown moving. The player jumps from this to a tactical map of a few kilometres in which specific units fight the enemy.

On the general map - which still does not cover the whole area without scrolling - military units are shown as NATO standard symbols, but no orders can be given to them.

This double command level means again that the player has more knowledge, and takes more decisions, than any individual in the real battle.

It is at the tactical level that the game is weakest. The Allied artillery, their most important weapon, is factored in to their units' strength (although, oddly, German artillery is shown as distinct units). The German S.S. units are given greater fighting power because of their few King Tiger tanks.

In most cases, there were far to the rear of the column, while U.S. tankmen, who saw Tigers everywhere, showed a marked reluctance to engage any German armour...

The game neither enforces nor requires units to keep formation or present a solid front, both of which are major problems in a real battle.

Despite the stress placed by the game on intelligence in noting the position of friendly and enemy units the designation they are given by the program is often confusingly inaccurate. Combat Command "A" of 9 Armored Division, for example, is described as "9 CCA Regiment".

Most of these objections can be overcome by organising the game for more than one player. The game controller, with access to the computer, would pass limited information to the strategic player, sitting with his own map but without knowledge of the enemy order of battle.

A third player might be given access to the tactical map to fight the battles. In this way, the advantages of the computer program in book-keeping and movement would be maximised, and its shortcomings in historical realism minimised.

But to play the game properly it is necessary to draw and keep one's own maps, and note movement and losses on paper. This is exactly the kind of book keeping that the computer is meant to render obsolete, and after a while the good player will abandon the program to carry on the game himself by more conventional methods. The Bulge is fun, and highly playable if the events it is meant to represent are ignored.

The victory criteria in The Bulge's program are based chiefly on a notional points value of towns on the strategic map held or captured. This also must be changed to provide a realistic wargame.

Given that the breakthrough to Antwerp was not feasible, the only object of the offensive for either side was the inflicting of enemy casualties: the Germans in their original hope of weakening or breaking the Western Allies, and the Allies in easing their crossing of the Rhine in the spring.

In the event, the Germans succeeded just enough for the Allies to request an early offensive in the East by the Red Army.

Far from strengthening Germany's hand against Russia the legacy of The Bulge was Russian - rather than American tanks in Berlin.