[padobson]

25-30 years ago, there was a game studio called 2am Games that made a series of strategy-type Java games that allowed online multiplayer. All the games were monetized with ad clicks. Click on an add, get 15 more minutes of play time.

Their most popular game was an RTS called Chain of Command. You had a squad of four soldiers that you could position on an isometric board designed to look like a farm. 5-10 players would each run their four-man squads into a firefight and play some scenario - seek and destroy, capture the flag, etc.

The other two games I enjoyed were a business strategy game called The Invisible Hand and another RTS where each player took a European country and conquered cities using robot-like walking tanks.

All of the content from 2am Games is lost to history. Chain of Command has some clones out there, but I've never been able to find anything - roms, source code, clones, for the other games. It's a part of my childhood I'll never be able to re-experience.

Edit: I got curious again and did some investigating. Here's their archived home page from 1997: https://web.archive.org/web/19970707215116/http://www.2am.co...