Strategic Simulations

Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI) was a video game developer and publisher of over 100 games from its founding in 1979 to its dissolution in 1994 (though the brand was in use until around 2002). The company focused on computer wargames then later added role-playing video games. SSI published the Panzer General series and the official video game adaptations of Dungeons & Dragons.

History

The company was founded by Joel Billings, a wargame enthusiast, who in the summer of 1979 saw the possibility of using the new home computers such as the TRS-80 for wargames. While unsuccessfully approaching Avalon Hill and Automated Simulations to publish wargames, he hired programmers John Lyons, who wrote Computer Bismarck—later claimed to have been the first "serious wargame" published for a microcomputer—and Ed Williger, who wrote Computer Ambush. Both games were written in BASIC as were many of SSI's early games.

Although Billings expected that he and Lyon would write the first version of Computer Bismarck on a North Star computer, Apple Computer executive Trip Hawkins, who would later found Electronic Arts, persuaded Billings to switch to the Apple II because of its graphics. Computer Bismarck appeared for the Apple in January 1980 and for the TRS-80 later in the year. Chuck Kroegel, who joined the company as an employee in 1983, was the co-author with David Landrey of many of the early SSI wargames and led product development for over ten years.