The onus of gameplay rests on the Japanese player who must attempt to bring forces to bear upon Midway Island.
Unlike the 1964 version, the search boards use hexagonal spaces to remove questions of corner adjacency.
Air-surface and surface-surface battles are held on boards representing a small patch of open ocean.
Once ships are encountered, the controlling player may elect to spend extra fuel to refine the search results.
Readied combat air units may be dispatched against any target in range, even if no information beyond "ships are present" is known.
Communication between allied players is limited (and subject to interception) and possibilities for confusion of friendly and opposing forces exist.
Twenty-seven years later, in 1991, as part of the Smithsonian American History Series, Avalon Hill released a revised edition to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.