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Harpoon (series)

video game series

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 6, 2026
Entity authorityQ1473424 ↗
Source-derived summary

Harpoon is a series of realistic air and naval computer wargames based upon Larry Bond's miniatures game of the same name. Players can choose between either the Blue or Red side in simulated naval combat situations, which includes local conflicts as well as simulated Cold War confrontations between the United States and the Soviet Union. Missions range from small missile boat engagements to large deep sea battles, with dozens of vessels and hundreds of aircraft. The game includes large databases containing many types of real world ships, submarines, aircraft, and land defenses (i.e. air bases and ports).

Overview

The simulations have a dedicated fan base with several websites offering a varying styles of scenarios and discussion forums, especially as the latest edition includes a feature to allow players to create their own scenarios. Often described as a "niche within a niche market," development of the simulation has progressed steadily through the years despite the overwhelming graphical details of first-person shooter and real-time strategy games. Advanced Gaming Systems, Inc. (AGSI), developers of Harpoon 3 Advanced Naval Warfare and Harpoon Commander's Edition (with HarpGamer), currently distributes the simulation as a Harpoon Ultimate Edition through Matrix games with technical support handled on a co-operative basis by AGSI, HarpGamer, and Matrix games employees.

Harpoon was originally published by Three-Sixty Pacific and has had several development paths and publishers.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Harpoon (series)” is video game series. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Harpoon, series and video, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current 224-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Harpoon, series and video is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “video game series” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1473424. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Search vocabulary
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Harpoon (series)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Harpoon (series) primary sources, Harpoon (series) archive and Harpoon research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Harpoon (series)”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Harpoon (series)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.