Medal of Honor: Allied Assault - On this day

The Medal of Honor series began as one of the few shooters in the 90s that was specifically designed just for consoles. However, with the transition to the 21st century, Electronic Arts decided to expand the horizons for the then still WWII series and bring it to the PC platform. It was a full year before the record rolled with Call of Duty, a game that started as a PC exclusive only to later appear on consoles. On this day, exactly 20 years ago, the Medal of Honor: Allied Assault was launched.

It was a virtual version of Spielberg’s film spectacle Saving Private Ryan and took the actors from Algeria, through Norway, to occupied France. It was played by ranger Mike Powell who helped several other characters, including Manon Batiste - the protagonist of the Medal of Honor: Underground.

In addition to the single-player campaign, the game also had multiplayer with four different modes. You could choose between two sides, and a scoring system was used, which was a kind of forerunner of killstreaks in the CoD. As in the previous Medal of Honor games, action is here accompanied by original music composer Michael Giacchino.

Allied Assault was and remains the best game of the MoH series for many. Although MoH: Frontline came out for consoles the same year, what the game offered remained pale in comparison to the introduction to Allied Assault, which had the most impressive depiction of Allied landings on the Normandy coast to date. This part of the MoH series was also remembered as the only MoH to have had two expansions, called Spearhead and Breakthrough.

Looking back, Allied Assault was the beginning of a completely different series. It used the same idTech 3 launchers (though modified) as Call of Duty and was worked on by the founders of Infinity Ward, who later launched a mega-successful series for Activision.