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Axis and Allies, for those unfamiliar, is a board game that recreates World War 2. Players can choose any Axis or Allied country to play as. There is also a WW1 version that was made rather recently. I quite enjoy playing it with friends and I always play as the Axis or Central Powers. In my most recent WW2 game I played as Japan and attacked the U.S. west coast rather than Hawaii. I then quickly launched a land invasion and by 1945 my Japanese troops had marched all the way across North America. My friend who was playing as Germany and Italy had considerably more trouble and was unable to defeat the Soviet Union. He began to get pushed back but I flew Japanese strategic bombers over from the U.S. east coast and bombed Soviet forces in Czechoslovakia. The Japanese intervention quickly turned the tide and he began advancing into the Soviet Union. At this point I finally finished crushing China and started moving against Australia. By 1950 all of Asia and the Pacific belonged to Japan

During the Summer I bought the (easy) 1941 edition but I haven't played it yet since none of my friends and family are interested.

That was my favorite board game when I was young. I played it for hours with friends. It was nice when you could get 4 or 5 kids together that were good enough to make it fun. Usually, it was only 2 of us. Great game. The computer version was ok, but by then so many war games had more detailed and realistic attributes.

Conflict in Vietnam
Axis and allies
Hearts of iron
Supreme ruler

All great games

I was not into board games when I was younger, had too much other things to do. But I am to this day playing HOI III TFH and SR of course. I cannot verbalize adequately why, but SR2020 is more enjoyable to me than SRU. It may be subconscious, as I abhor Steam.

The one "war game" which fascinated me the most and led to many early mornings was Gary Grigsby's Pacific War. I would pay it right now if I did not have to fiddle with DOS Box.

Harpoon and it's sequels were also good games I would be immersed in.

Steel Panthers and sequels.

Jane's Fleet Command

Janes's 688(I)

Red Storm Rising, by MicroProse based on the Tom Clancy novel.

Another really enjoyable game which I would pay today or really like to see a modern remake, Great Naval Battles of The North Atlantic 1939-1943.

V for Victory great game series

Jane's USAF

Tom Clancy's SSN

These are but a few of the many PC games I have in my gaming closet and remember fondly.

I'm an avid board game player, still today, but I find A&A takes just soooo long :(

It needs the right group of people to keep it from being painful.

I find TrippleA to be a fairly good digital clone of Axis & Allies. Far better than any of the official digital games released at least. I remember playing hot-seat with a few friends during a long train journey once. Being an open source project it also pretty much runs on every platform you might wish for.

As for the board-game version I agree with Balthagor that it requires a decent group for it to be worth it.
Personally I do not mind if the game say drags out. I find it more annoying if there say is a skill-gap to the Axis disadvantage as there is basically nothing you can do as say Japan if Germany is not being played very well except either watch the Allied drown you in hardware or babysit Germany (yes believe it or not I have mostly played Japan ^_^).