Balance of Power (1985) is a cold-war themed geopolitical video game from the mid-1980s in which the player takes on the role of either the President of the United States or General Secretary of the Soviet Union.

The game was created by Chris Crawford, among whose accomplishments was founding the Game Designers Conference. The year after the game came out, Crawford published a book by the same name. Balance of Power the book provides a rare insight into the inner workings of a video game’s design, algorithms, and intent. You can read the book in its entirety (and with recent annotations that puts some of the 1980s era design constraints into context) on Crawford’s website.