A little bit of history..

In 1994, Panzer General, a PC turn-based strategy game was launched. Set in World War II, the player had the chance of taking the role of a German general leading his elite fighting units to victory. The longest campaign started in ’39 with the invasion of Poland and ended in ’45. The player’s performance as a strategist determined whether the last battle in 1945 was defending Berlin against allied onslaught or storming Washington for the ultimate victory.

Probably Panzer General wasn’t the first computer strategy game with a WW2 background, but for me and many others it was *the* game. I played it many times, in order to try its various scenarios (yeah, it was fun to purposely lose some key battles in order to go with your super-army into the defense, an easy one at that).

Then, a few years later, Panzer General II, came out. Like its predecessor, it was a turn-based strategy game. It had improved graphics (isometric perspective), some new concepts appeared (like the use of leaders that would add benefits to the unit they commanded) but it lost the grand-strategy feeling. The battles were confined to small tactical situation in a greater campaign context. Nevertheless, PG2 was a very nice game, indeed and I guess even more people played and liked it (that is, has a greater fan base than PG1)

PG2 had also an scenario editor (it was becoming the norm for real-time and turn-based strategy games to ship with an editor). I used it to start working on a campaign for the Romanian army, but I think I was the only one playing it ;-)

Panzer General 3 jumped in the 3D madness bandwagon. It also brought in some interesting features, like relying more on the unit commander concept. I didn’t play PG3 too much, and I could say this was true for other PG fans I know. It was the last game in the Panzer General series.