As far as I can tell it was never popular.
:(
It came out in 1989 and was ported to every game system and microcomputer that was released in america and Japan for like the next 3 generations of hardware. It sold over 4 million copies. Its the game that gave peter molyneux a blank check to make whatever game he wanted for like three decades.
All these games will be lost in time… Like tears in rain…
i read rainbow six because i played the game, and while i enjoyed it, even me as a 13 year old boy was kind of disturbed by how 20% of the book is lurid descriptions of the beauty and efficiency of our weapons. long descriptions of how the troopers are super competent, long descriptions of the precision and mastery of the snipers, how the guns are well oiled and wonderful tools, etc. real psycho stuff. also the bad guys are environmentalists planning to kill everyone on the planet with a engineered virus lol
essentially they first hired baldwin, who was not a leading man but had already done some big movies, and it was going to be more of a traditional vehicle for baldwin.
then they hired sean connery, a genuine movie star, and he wanted them to expand on his character and make the soviets more interesting and human as a result. they had too or wanted to take advantage of connery’s star power and the result is a much better story.
so oilbrained that you included “no fuel to run the oiltankers” as a downside to not producing oil