Wargaming has always been a niche market but it's always had a dedicated following. Back in the early '80s there was one man who took wargaming from the tabletop and onto 8bit computers, making the whole genre accessible not only to dedicated wargamers but to a whole new breed of would-be Montys and Rommels. This man was R.T. Smith and one of the finest examples of his work was the wonderful Vulcan.

The game was focused on the Allied campaign in Tunisia and the beautifully simple interface was the jewel in its crown. The game used a lot of rules that still exist in wargames today - hex-based terrain, stacking units in the same hex and so on - but the way Mr Smith managed to hide all the tedious, pernickety foibles of the tabletop wargame system from the player was superb.

Not only that, but the game's AI was way ahead of its day. The computer forces played a decent game but you always had the feeling they were playing by the same set of rules as you, something that's lacking in some of today's wargames. Though the genre has moved on a great deal - in fact, the lines between wargames and their less intense cousins, real-time strategy games, have become blurred - our hats go off to Mr Smith and his series of four or five 8bit wargames that not only led the field, but defined the genre. We wonder what happened to him...