Given the long history of portraying ancient battles in board games, it’s surprising that it took so long for historically faithful interpretations of the battles of Alexander, Hannibal and Caesar to hit the computer. Avalon Hill’s Alexander the Great portrayed the battle of Gaugamela way back in 1971. The same year saw SPI do a […]
Entries Tagged as 'Retro'
Great Battles of History Series (1997-98)
April 8th, 2008 · 6 Comments · Ancients, Feature:Anc, Retro, Review, Wargames
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Caesar series (1993-2006)
April 4th, 2008 · 5 Comments · Ancients, City Builder, Feature:Anc, Retro, Review
The Caesar series is easily the most successful ancient themed brand in the gaming world. 2006 saw the release of the fourth game under that title. It also spawned a legion of other Impressions developed city builders set in Greece, Egypt and China, a legacy that spawned two new studios – Tilted Mill and Firefly. […]
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Centurion: Defender of Rome (1990)
April 1st, 2008 · 10 Comments · Ancients, Feature:Anc, Retro, Review
Late in November 2006, I turned in my review of Medieval II: Total War to the editor of Computer Games Magazine. In his reply to that e-mail, he asked if I could quickly turn around a Revisionist History contribution (the magazine’s retro column) connected to the game. I suggested Centurion, the boss man didn’t argue […]
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Encyclopedia of War: Ancient Battles (1988)
March 20th, 2008 · 14 Comments · Ancients, Feature:Anc, Retro, Review, Wargames
In 1988, Cases Computer Simulations and R.T. Smith released Encyclopedia of War: Ancient Battles, a game that was intended to be the first in a series of historical miniature games. The mid 80s was probably the high point of wargame dominance in the computer gaming market, and there were really no ancient wargames on the […]
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Annals of Rome – The Designer’s Perspective
March 17th, 2008 · 5 Comments · Ancients, Feature:Anc, Interview, Retro
As I noted in an edit to my Annals of Rome entry, I was delighted to get an email from the designer of the game, George Jaroszkiewicz. The fact that he was not credited in the original packaging (“When I created the game, it was inconvenient to publish my name, so I invented the name […]
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Annals of Rome (1986)
March 14th, 2008 · 7 Comments · Ancients, Feature:Anc, Retro, Review
Annals of Rome is usually forgotten when people talk about classic strategy games of the period. It was one part of a PSS developed trilogy called the Wargamer Series (the other two were Fire Zone and Sorceror Lord), and PSS didn’t exactly have a reputation for creating brilliant titles. Its early titles were arcade ripoffs. […]
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