LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Eastern Front
built 141 days ago
The Eastern Front was Useless Films' first big film. Running for 35 minutes, The Eastern Front led to a change of direction within the company. Realizing that half-hour to even hour-long films were possible, Useless Films decided to focus more and more on longer films. The film was an experiment with an "interactive camera," and at one point you can even see the cameraman's hand enter the shot. There is little-to-no dialogue in the film... and the film also has a weak and if not inexistent plot. Adopting a style more similar to a documentary, The Eastern Front allowed for more experimentation.
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The Eastern Front was the primary theater of combat between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II. It was somewhat separate from the other theatres of the war, not only geographically, but ... for its scale and ferocity. In Russia, the war is referred to as the Great Patriotic War (Великая Отечественная Война, Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyna in Russian), a name which alludes to the Russo–Napoleonic Patriotic War on Russian soil in 1812. Some scholars of the conflict use the term Russo-German War, while others use Soviet-German War or German-Soviet War.
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The Eastern Front was by far the largest and bloodiest theatre of World War II. It is generally accepted as being the most costly conflict in human history with over 30 million dead as a result. It involved more land combat than all other World War II theatres combined. The Eastern Front resulted in staggering losses and disregard for human life almost entirely as a consequence of the ideological premise for the war. To hardline Nazis in Berlin, the war against the Soviet Union was one of a struggle of Fascism against Communism, and the Aryan race against the "inferior" Slavic race. From the beginning of the conflict, Hitler referred it as a "war of annihilation". Aside from the ideological conflict, the mindframe of the leaders of Germany and the Soviet Union, Hitler and Stalin respectively, contributed to the escalation of terror and murder on an unprecedented scale.
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Lacking the manpower to remain on the offensive all along the Eastern Front, Hitler decided to focus German efforts in the south with the goal of taking the oil fields. Codenamed Operation Blue, this new offensive began on June 28, 1942, and caught the Soviets, who thought the Germans would renew their efforts around Moscow, by surprise. Advancing, the Germans were delayed by heavy fighting in Voronezh which allowed the Soviets to bring reinforcements south. Unlike the year before, the Soviets were fighting well and conducting organized retreats which prevented the scale of losses endured in 1941. Angered by a perceived lack of progress, Hitler divided Army Group South into two separate units, Army Group A and Army Group B. Possessing the majority of the armor, Army Group A was tasked with taking the oil fields, while Army Group B was ordered to take Stalingrad to protect the German flank.
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Eastern Front was released in 3 different variants. The first two were a 16 KB cassette version and a 32 KB floppy version with improved graphics. Both for the Atari 400 and both developed by Chris Crawford and released through Atari's APX (Atari Program Exchange), a semi-independent label which sold bare-bones releases mainly developed by independent programmers. Some APX games became so popular that eventually they received the full Atari treatment and got an "official" release. This is what happened with Eastern Front, which received its third and final release in 1982 for the Atari 800 in a 48 KB floppy version with improved AI and additional difficulty levels.
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In terms of wargame play value, Eastern Front is packed with exciting fun. The 660 playing pieces include the troops and weapons of the Soviet Red Army, the German Wehrmacht and Romania’s Armata Romana from 1941 and early 1942. The fearsome T-34, the Hammer of the Proletariat, is present along with Germany’s PzKw IV and Romania’s inadequate R2. German commandos, Soviet tank-hunting platoons, Romanian cavalry, and more make for a varied spread of pieces. The eight mapboards represent typical terrain found in the Soviet Union, and are placed together in may possible combinations to form the playing surface.
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Eastern Front