Probably one of the coolest features of North and South is the ability to play head-to-head with a second player. There were several classic two-player Nintendo games, though most of them were sports or racing games. North and South is the only two-player real time strategy game for the NES I can think of... though feel free to prove me wrong.
Gameplay
As you might expect, the goal of North and South is to win the Civil War. Before you start playing you choose the year of the war you want to start fighting in. Selecting a year doesn't have a big impact on the game, it only really affects what states you control when the game starts. You also get to select whether you want to play as the Union (North) or the Confederacy (South). There are a few other options you can turn on or off (thunderstorms, Indians (err... Native Americans), the French), that cause random events to occur while playing the game.
Once you've selected your favorite Civil War year, you get a map of the good 'ole USA where some states are controlled by the North some are controlled by the South. Each side is given a few soldier icons to move around the map in an effort to take over territory and battle the enemy.
On your turn you may move your troops, one at a time, onto any state on the map. Depending on the state you move a troop to, and what is currently occupying that state, a few different things can happen.
1. If it's an empty state you simply occupy it.
2. If it's an unoccupied state controlled by your enemy, you take control.
3. If it's a state occupied by an enemy troop, all hell breaks loose.
By all hell breaks loose, I mean you head to the battlefield to kick your enemies ass in a winner take all, no holds barred 3 on 3 match up. In each battle each team gets a cannon, a cavalry unit and a soldier unit. The cannon can blast any enemy unit from across the map - it does the most damage but has a limited number of shots. Your cavalry is composed of three horses with pixelated riders wielding pixelated swords. The cavalry is the quickest and most maneuverable, though it has the shortest attack range. Each soldier unit has 6 individual soldiers which move and shoot in unison. They move slower than the cavalry but can do more damage from a farther distance.
During a battle you can move any of your units toward your enemy. While it sounds simple, you need to pay attention and take into account all movement on the battlefield. You may be so focused on sending your cavalry out to cut off some heads that you don't realize their cannon is blowing your soldiers to smithereens. On the other hand, your opponent might be so busy preparing a cannon shot he fails to notice the soldiers coming at his horses with guns-a-blazing. With the small number of units available to a player, the battles tend to be very quick. After some repeated play you can start developing strategies and get a sense of how best to use your troops.
In addition to the battles that make up the core of the game, there are key points on the map that when captured start a timed mini-game. When a player captures a state with a fort on it, the player must take control of the fort before occupying the state. Attempting to thwart your take-over are dogs, exploding boxes and random enemy soldiers that fall from the sky. If this all sounds very stupid, it's because it is. While it's nice of the game's creators to try to mix up the gameplay, the fort sections just aren't very fun and really aren't very challenging.
You end up winning the Civil War if you succeed in wiping your opponent off the map. All you get is a congratulations screen and a sense of accomplishment. Nice work, sport - something that took years and caused countless casualties took you 10 minutes.
Game Over
North and South is the video game equivalent of a middle school dropout explaining the Civil War to a 5 year old. "So, like... the Civil War was a fight that took place a long time ago in America. There were horses, cannons, army men and occasionally soldiers had to capture trains or a fort... or something..." Not a totally accurate representation of the events that took place during the war, but it does make for a pretty fun game.
It's interesting to look back at essentially a very primitive Real Time Strategy (RTS) game. While you can't make a direct connection between this and, let's say, Starcraft or Civilization, the core gameplay is similar. Fight. Take over new territory. Fight some more. Newer games have better graphics, historical accuracy, and more units to play with, but North and South gets the basics right.
You may be concerned that if you play as the South and win, that you might cause a tear in the space time continuum that will cause some alternate reality where we all speak with a southern drawl and sit on our porches with parasols while drinking mint juleps. While this is a legitimate concern, the odds of it actually happening are very low (contact your local theoretical physicist for more information). What is probably more likely is that your friends might look at you kind of funny and comment on how nice the confederate flag on your pick up truck looks. Of course, if you play by yourself (or with yourself) you can avoid either scenario outlined above.
