Silent Service (Nintendo Entertainment System) Review
~by tankMage (August 2025)
Score:7.5/10 (Decent)
A surprisingly sophisticated submarine game on the NES!?
I have an affinity for obscure games, particularly obscure NES games, so Silent Service is just about perfect for me. I also really like naval themed games, which are far too rare. While this game has a lot of traits that make it appealing, it’s also very slow paced and it does not offer much variety. To be fair, Silent Service is based on the World War II naval operations in the Pacific Ocean, so there’s not a lot to do as a submarine captain besides attack convoys. Even so, I was able to eek quite a bit of enjoyment out of this game when I played it many years ago and found it fun when I replayed it for this review.
Silent Service is really complex for an NES game. Players have to keep track of fuel, ammo, damage, and watch out for enemy destroyers just to survive. There are also a lot of little details that affect gameplay like whether or not the submarine is submerged or on the surface. Even water temperature can play a role. The amount of thought that went into this military sim can be credited to the great Sid Meier, who originally designed it for home computers. How Silent Service saw an NES port four years after its initial release is beyond me, but it did and it’s not half bad.
Story
It’s WWII and you’re a submarine captain tasked with attacking Japanese convoys in the pacific. There’s not much else to the plot. Players can choose from a variety of scenarios, but these replicate battle conditions that may have been encountered at the time and don’t really tell a story. While I don’t feel like Silent Service needs a story, a short ending or briefing for the scenarios would have been nice.
Graphics
The graphics are weak by NES standards, though they are far better than what the Apple II could offer. There’s not much detail when looking through the periscope or through binoculars on the deck. Ships are very blocky, the ocean is just plain blue without any texture, and the shoreline looks like dirty cotton-balls through the scope. The devs did a lot better with the cabin, gauges, engineering room, and maps which are all nicely detailed. Ships burst into flames when damaged badly, which is another cool detail, but none of the effects are all that impressive.
Gameplay
Silent Service is a fairly robust combat sim, especially if you take into consideration that it was originally made in 1985. Your sub’s ability to dive plays a very real role in how quickly enemy destroyers detect you as well as their ability to find you. The sub can dive very deep to avoid detection at the cost of speed and even the ability to attack. But, diving too deep can cause the sub to take damage or crush it entirely. Players can also fight on the surface, but this guarantees that the enemy will find you and leaves you open to cannon fire.
The sub can change its heading, stop at ports in certain game modes, and adjust its speed. There’s also a really detailed map system. Players can choose from a number of scenarios with all kinds of adjustable perimeters, like how skilled enemy destroyers are, visibility, and overall difficulty to further flesh the game out.
Sadly, all the nuance of this game is kind of goes to waste. Missions boil down to sinking convoys which are guarded by destroyers or maybe a tougher Kai Bokan ship. Depending on the scenario and the settings the player chooses, convoys are often very close and easy to find. Even heavily guarded convoys are easy to sink once you have a basic understanding of the game. Most players will be able to plow through Silent Service in a couple of hours, maybe less. After that, the only thing left to do is War Patrols and maybe turn up the difficulty. Sadly, War Patrols are just an extension of the basic scenarios do not offer anything all that new.
There are a lot of things the devs could have added to make Silent Service last longer and give it a bit more oomph. Aircraft carriers, mines, hazards like underwater reefs, enemy subs, and even violent storms could have put more meat on this game’s bones. Just adding one or two of the suggestions I made would have helped a lot.
Despite its lack of content, Silent Service is fun. I’d even describe it as cozy, as strange as that may sound. Somehow, I found myself getting sucked into the 8-Bit world of this game where you’re a lonely submarine crew in a big ocean with a war raging around you. Maybe I’m over imaginative, but I’ll give this game points for being immersive in an 8-Bit kind of way. That said, it’s also boring at times, especially if you are playing in a way that forces you to search for the enemy. Luckily, time can be sped up in classic sim fashion, so boredom isn’t too much of a problem.
User Interface
The controls could be a lot better. For one thing, they’re set up like a PC game. The command icons must be highlighted with a cursor that is controlled by the D-Pad. It goes without saying that this system is cumbersome. Having to move the cursor to the left or right side of the periscope in battle to turn it isn’t great and I’m sure they could have mapped the controls more intuitively had they put the effort into doing so.
At least all the command icons and menus are self-explanatory. The maps and readouts for things like target range and heading were also very well designed, so this game has its virtues.
Music and Sound
Sound effects take center stage in Silent Service, because it only has one song and it’s not very good. The explosions and such all sound fine. There’s also the rumble of the sub’s engines, but that’s about it. It’s kind of hard for me to imagine this game having an actual soundtrack. In fact, it would have ruined the vibe, so the music and sound effects are fine in my book.
Final Thoughts
Silent Service is a cool game, but it doesn’t offer a lot to do. As I said, an hour is probably enough to run through all the missions. After that, there are War Patrols, which are basically high score runs which maybe add a couple more hours to the game while being the more or less same as the missions. At the same time, there are not many games like it and it has a good bit of the magic that makes NES games so special so it’s a cool experience.
I got this game for $1 US at a yardsale in the late 1990s and feel like it was a dollar well spent. However, I’d be disappointed if I bought this game full price at a store. There just isn’t enough to it to make it worth the $60 it likely cost at the time.
Thanks for reading my Silent Service review!
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