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Pacific War is a simulation of the Battle of Guadalcanal, in the eastern Solomon Islands, in August 1942. The forces involved are American and Japanese, the player controls the American forces. He can set courses for the American task forces, assign numbers of fighters, torpedo planes, and dive bombers on search missions, air strikes, or combat air patrols to prevent the Japanese from reinforcing their troops on Guadalcanal.

The on-screen map shows you the positions of all the American forces throughout the simulation, but you must rely on the feedback from search missions for information on Japanese movements.

You are safe from any enemy attack until you get an 'Enemy Aircraft Sighted' report. This aircraft must be destroyed by your combat air patrols or it will tell the Japanese task force of your whereabouts.

All positions and co-ordinates are set by a rather laborious cursor key method and checked, with military precision, by repeating them again. This may be considered necessary by the purist wargamer, but for the uninitiated it makes the simulation incredibly tedious along with a poor graphics and unresponsive controls.

On the whole, Pacific War will be welcomed by the wargamer entering the computer field but despised by the computer user attempting his first wargame - I suggest that the latter begins with the traditional board wargame until he has developed a taste for the 'art' of wargaming.