Jagged Alliance

Jagged Alliance is a 1995 turn-based tactics game made by Madlab Software and published by Sir-Tech. It is set on Metavira, a small island in the South Atlantic that was once used for nuclear testing. A rare tree grows there whose sap has medical value, and a former partner of the scientist who discovered it has taken most of the island by force. You are hired to take it back.

You hire mercenaries from an agency, each a named person with a daily fee, skills and a personality. The island is a grid of squares. Each day you send squads into squares to fight turn-based battles, and once a square is taken, local people can be hired to guard it and to tap the trees for the income that pays your mercenaries.

Everything that made the sequel loved began here: the hiring screen, the mercenaries' voices and moods, the money that runs out if you are slow, and a map you take back piece by piece. The cast is smaller, but it already has the series' sense of humour.

It is an early-1990s DOS game and plays like one. The interface is stiff, and the sequel improved nearly every system. Play it to see where Jagged Alliance 2 came from, or if you have finished that game and want more of its cast. It is sold on GOG.

Jagged Alliance 2 took this game's structure and enlarged every part of it. The sequel's strategic map is larger, its sectors are bigger, its cast is wider, and its interrupts and militia are deeper. The first game shows the same idea at its simplest: pay people by the day and spend them on squares of land.