I don’t have many strategy games on the Apple. Even by stretching the definition a bit to include King’s Bounty, that makes four.
- Lords of Conquest
- King’s Bounty
- The Ancient Art of War
- Battlechess
Actually I have a couple more that didn’t make it on my stand, for lack of room mostly.
Lords of Conquest is a big favorite of the era for me. More about it here!
King’s Bounty stands out a bit in the sense that it doesn’t pit you against one or multiple opponents on a map that needs conquering. It really feels more like an adventure game with tactical battles involving armies. But it was the predecessor of the well-known Heroes of Might and Magic series, which are generally labelled Strategy. I actually like to call it HOMM 0 and I can’t be the only one, because it plays very much like those games did and was also created by New World Computing, Aka Jon Van Caneghem. It’s also a big favorite of mine and will get it’s own section here shortly.
I wasn’t a big fan of The Ancient Art of War. It taught me that Subotaï was Sun Tzu’s assistant, or something. Other than that the real-time gameplay was ahead of it’s time but felt clumsy. Therefore I left it off the shelves as well. Choices had to be made!
I got Battlechess quite recently. I have no significant ancient memories of it, other than playing it at a friend’s house once, maybe twice. The animations are fun, but… Is that really what we play Chess for?