The conclusion of Tony Carnevale's game diary:
In order to win this mission, you have to satisfy several victory conditions. There’s just one little tiny problem: one of them is impossible.
Yeaaaah, spending more on development than you make back isn’t a sign of good business decisions, guys!
It’s a shame, though. I’ve never been into historical wargames and hadn’t even heard of Ambush!, but they made some serious classics in other genres as well. Also, they put out a few classic strategy videogames as well. Something I didn’t realize? They apparently put out a computer version of Advanced Civilization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avalon_Hill’s_Advanced_Civilization ) … right about the time Sid Meier and Microprose were putting out Civilization II, the heir to the videogame heir to the boardgame. Oops.
The entire board wargaming industry crashed for a variety of reasons in the late '80s/ early '90s. AH had a lot of great games, and were even owned by a printing company, and they couldn’t withstand the crash. Even if they had made perfect business decisions it’s hard to imagine them making the transition to the more recent boardgaming boom intact.
Ambush came from the Victory Games folks which was some SPI folks after they went under, right? Or did AH just decide to put it under the VG label?
It didn’t say revenue, it said profit.
Basically they wanted people to know they weren’t just lining their pockets, they were devoted to building better games.
Avalon Hill’s fight with Microprose over Civilization computer games is what finally did them in. Sad day.
Does anyone know why Hasbro wanted the assets since they’ve never really done much with it?
Yes, John Butterfield (Ambush! designer) got his start at SPI in the late '70s. Victory Games was part of AH, and published games that were more along the lines of the SPI ‘hardcore’ wargame designs. VG was overseen by Mark Herman, also an old SPI hand.
‘Why did Hasbro buy AH’ is kind of a mystery, to my knowledge. My best guess is that they they got the entire catalog so cheaply ($6 million), that it seemed like a no-brainer. Even if they had no real interest in keeping their wargame line in print, they still obtained rights to games like ‘Acquire’, so I doubt they came out too badly in the deal.
Would have been nicer if someone like GMT games was able to get it.
I played big day-long advanced civilization games a couple times with my board gaming crew at the time, and I used the old AH PC game to prepare. It really helped for rules learning.
I quite enjoyed these game diaries. I expect great things from Quarter to Three Investigations, assuming they use better business practices than Avalon Hill.
Wait, that’s it? No more scenarios??