Close Combat is a real-time computer wargame that takes place from a top-down graphical perspective,[1][2] in contrast to the isometric visuals used in strategy games such as Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness.

[1][3] Mental and physical combat stresses impact a soldier's behavior and morale;[6][7] an exhausted or scared squad may grow reluctant to shoot or move, or may fire inaccurately.

[2][3] Close Combat allows players to fight 39 small-scale confrontations or engage in a long-form campaign, which extends from the Normandy landings to the Battle of Saint-Lô.

[7] Zabalaoui later said that the company's more traditional wargames "never really excited" him as a designer,[12] and he noted that the veterans Atomic had consulted for those games "repeatedly" brought up the genre's unrealistic portrayal of soldiers' behavior.

[9] Following a split with Three-Sixty that culminated in a lawsuit for unpaid royalties,[13][14] Atomic was signed to Avalon Hill's computer game division in 1993 by producer Jim Rose.

[9] Zabalaoui expected Beyond Squad Leader's deviations to prove controversial from the start,[12] and the decision subsequently polarized the wargame community, particularly the biggest fans of the original board series.

[9][24] Beyond Squad Leader underwent a long and troubled development cycle,[24] and Atomic and Avalon Hill experienced creative friction during the creation of both it and the World at War games.

[25][26][17] Computer Gaming World columnist Alan Emrich wrote in 1995, "To say there was no love lost between [...] Jim Rose and Atomic's Keith Zabalaoui would be a gracious understatement.

"[24] Rose later complained that Avalon Hill's parent company, Monarch Office Services, was disinterested and "conservative" in allocating funds and distribution to the computer game division.

[29] Atomic adopted a relatively loose team structure for the project: Zabalaoui provided the general plan and oversight, while others designed many sections in large part by themselves.

[29] Collaborating with Dr. Steven Silver, Atomic gave each soldier an individual anxiety index based on tiredness, preparedness, combat experience, past successes, and other factors.

According to T. Liam McDonald of boot, these factors were reduced to numbers and incorporated into "probability tables" that determine soldiers' actions and change in response to events during play.

While TAI controls psychological modeling and low-level action, SAI "is constantly analyzing the battlefield for enemy troops and keeping tabs on the big picture", Zabalaoui said.

[29] The game ultimately grew to 2,000 source lines of code that relate to psychological modeling,[7] and more CPU time was allocated to its AI simulation than to its visuals.

[30] He felt that the game's limited budget and support intensified after Monarch launched the costly magazine Girls' Life, and he left for TalonSoft as a result.

Avalon Hill Director of Software Development Bill Levay replied that, while the company's decisions "certainly are conservative", the board and computer game divisions were profitable and their overall situation was "really pretty good".

[33] According to Zabalaoui, the project's real-time nature and psychological modeling had attracted the publisher, which at the time was seeking "developers with a good track record who could help get them established."

[2] The magazine later nominated Close Combat as its pick for the best wargame of 1996, but ultimately gave the prize to that year's Battleground games: Shiloh, Antietam, and Waterloo.

[1] While Wartofsky praised Close Combat's stripped-down quality as "focus", including its small-scale campaign and lack of a level editor,[2] Miller considered these signs of the product's shallowness.

[1] Next Generation's reviewer echoed Miller's criticism of the jerky scrolling, but disagreed with his overall positive assessment and labeled the game "a serious Microsoft misfire."

The writer found its AI system fundamentally flawed and remarked that, while allowing troops to disobey orders is interesting in theory, in practice it makes the game frustrating and unfair.

[4] Conversely, Andrew Wright called Close Combat "a big step forward for wargamers" in PC Zone, despite its scrolling issues.

[3] Although again noting the "sluggish" scrolling, PC Games's Andrew Miller agreed with Wright that Close Combat represented a new plateau for computer wargames and held its audiovisuals in particularly high regard.

[6] In 1997, the editors of PC Gamer US presented Close Combat with their 1996 "Best Wargame" award and remarked that its developers had "broken away from the long-established, turn-based models of the past".

[11] Atomic reacted by splitting from Microsoft and migrating to Mindscape's Strategic Simulations (SSI) label in April 1999,[49] in order to create Close Combat IV: Battle of the Bulge (1999).

[57] Two months later, Atomic was forced to lay off all employees beyond Zabalaoui and two other senior members after The Gores Group canceled the team's in-development Hammer's Slammers game.

[62] Following Marines, Atomic worked with Destineer and the USMC on Close Combat: First to Fight, a first-person shooter intended again as a training tool for the military.

[66] In 2006, Destineer licensed the Close Combat intellectual property to Matrix Games; the two companies announced plans to remake and update Atomic's early entries in the series.

The companies decided not to update the first Close Combat, a choice dictated by "the age of the code, and the fact that the series and game engine changed dramatically after the first iteration", according to Simtek's Shaun Wallace.