While he had started developing games part-time while working for the United States Department of Defense, he left to become a full-time game developer halfway through his third title, North Atlantic '86.

In many ways it is the kind of game that we had in mind several years ago when we were daydreaming about where the wargaming hobby was headed now that the computer had arrived.

"[2] In a 1985 survey of computer wargames for Current Notes, M. Evan Brooks called Carrier Force "worth the effort for anyone desirous of learning about the period", but considered it "extremely slow in execution" and saw it as having historical errors.

[6] In his similar 1989 survey, J. L. Miller of Computer Play found that the game was "hampered by very slow execution" and offered it a middling score.

He told Electronic Games, "I liked the subject matter and, given the evolution in computer capability and my programming skills, I wanted to refine it.