later the magazine still rated the game five out of five points, stating "obsolete by contemporary programming standards, it is still fun to play", and in 1993 rated the game four stars out of five. Creative Computing called Eastern Front "one of the very best war games available for a personal computer ... nearly every aspect of the game is a technical masterpiece", praising its artificial intelligence and "magnificent" scrolling map. The magazine concluded that it was "also a virtuoso demonstration of the awesome built-in capabilities of the Atari computer. This game literally could not be done on any other computer in as satisfactory an execution". Atari magazine Antic called Eastern Front "a game master piece, a brilliant simulation of battle conditions on the eastern front in WW II." ANALOG Computing rated the game 9.3 out of 10, calling it "truly magnificent". Citing time pressure as a difference from board games, COMPUTE! called Eastern Front "a paradigm for computer war games" and praised its graphics and gameplay, with the only major criticism being the inability to save and restore a game. InfoWorld rated it "Excellent" overall in December 1981, and later referred to it as one of "the deepest computer games around." BYTE stated that Eastern Front "is possibly the first fun war game for people who hate war games". The Addison-Wesley Book of Atari Software 1984 gave the game an overall A rating, calling it "perhaps the best-designed computer war game to appear on any microcomputer to date" and praising the graphics and joystick-driven user interface. The book concluded that it "is the first war game that non-warriors might enjoy ... Highly recommended." Creative Computing named Eastern Front Game of the Year in 1981. The Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design named it Best Adventure Game for Home Computer, 1981. In 1987 Crawford stated that it was one of the three games he was proud of, with Legionnaire and Balance of Power. In 2002 GameSpy wrote that Eastern Front was considered to be one of the first computer wargames that paper-and-pencil wargamers approved of. Legacy While the game was still being sold, Crawford released its source code through APX as a separate, commercial product targeted at developers. He was surprised that while it sold well, no other game used it. He also released a scenario editor, but only one pre-packaged set of user-created scenarios is known. Crawford used