Righto.
I'm Australian, born May '67.
My parents studied medicine, graduated 1952. They were born in 1926, so were at school during WWII. We had relatives killed in WWII. My parents knew friends/relatives of their families who were killed/captured, some in North Africa, others in the Pacific (it says something about the Japanese conduct in WWII that ALL decided being captured by the Gremans was infinitely preferable...mind you, about 4% of allied POWs died in German captivity, while the figure for those captured by Japs was around 26%.....so they were right!).
My interest in military history came about through playing war games in my teen years: all sorts of things from Tractics (rules for combat using 1/72 scale tank and soldier models) to Squad Leader, Midway, Bismarck, Second Frond, Fortress Europa etc..... I also got into RPGs (role playing, not the shoulder-launched variety!). My closest friends are those I've had since as far back as year 5 at school (yikes - that's 30+ years!!!!), and we all became friends partly through gaming.
I prefer Atlantic over Pacific because there is a steady swing from the Germans holding the advantages to the Allies doing so. The Allies get better escorts (and more of them), radar, better ASDIC, better weapons etc. The Germans get very little to offset that. In a game context, this means things get harder as the war progresses. It also means things get harder but you build experience to help cope with it. In short, there is a steady build up of tension and challenge.
The Pacific, in contrast, is a situation where the Allies continue to gain superiority in technology and resources. You get better boats, better torps, better radar etc. while the Japs gain very little in comparison (consider that Dick O'Kane was making surface attacks against convoys in 1944 as, even then, the Japs didn't have radar on most convoy escorts and, even when they did, it was so poor it wasn't a great influence on results!).
There's always the challenge of learning how best to use your boat's capabilities, and learn your enemies' strengths/weaknesses, so both sims have things to offer, but the Atlantic is always the more challenging for me (as it was historically).
As for other geopolitical comments etc I'll avoid them, although I do a lot of reading on such things (as it happens, I've just finished reading Nemesis: The Battle For Japan, 1944-45 by Max Hastings....a fascinating read).
One comment I will make is this: it frustrates me somewhat that most people in the Western world tend to overlook a fundamental truth about the European theatre of WWII - it was the USSR that was mainly responsible for the defeat of Germany.
Some really interesting info from other posters here!!
Cheers
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