One of the things that I really liked about SH1 were the little details on the map. Things like wakes of ships and torpedoes; falling ashcans and the shockwaves of their explosions. The wakes were especially nice because they were longer depending on ship speeds. Just a couple of nice little touches that I kind of miss these days. But what I miss most about SH1 was that running a high-periscope watch on the surface actually amounted to extending the horizon and longer sighting distance.
I cut my teeth on SH1--back in '97 or '98 I would have been 12- or 13-years old when I found it--so lots of great memories there. A while back, I found a bunch of patrol logs that I wrote up at the time, so it was especially cool to compare the "then" and the "now" experiences. It would have been the first game that I turned into a simming experience, and despite some differences, there were a surprising number of similarities. I never could wrap my head around manual targeting in SH1, though.
What really sticks in my mind was when I ran my first night surface attack in SH1's seas.
Marus really looked huge from the bridge when you were slinking in low in the water
