Retro Gaming: Star General

Thanks to the recent hype about Panzer Generals modern (online F2P) successors I was reminded of the gameplay-wise very similar Star General by the same developer (SSI) which I really liked to play about 15 or 16 years ago because I preferred the sci-fi setting.

Wikipedia

Panzer General is turn-based game, set on operational level hex maps. One plays lone scenarios from either Axis or Allied side and against a computer or human opponent. In Campaign Mode, the player assumes the role of a German Generalissimus against the Allied computer.

Back then I got Star General through the Gold Games 2 (1997) games collection and of course I threw away all my old game CDs years ago. After extensive online searching I finally found a DOS version (DOWNLOAD LINK) of the game which I could install and play with the marvelous Boxer app (a well designed version of DOSBox for Mac OSX).

While playing I was hardly reminded how time-consuming games were about a decade or more ago. I even had to take a look at the manual to figure out how to get started and you have to handle a lot more numbers and statistics as it is common today, plus the difficulty is defined completely different. But even though this minor flaws in my opinion it’s still very fun to play today and a very good round-based strategy game. Just the design of the GUI and the menu navigation really annoyed me…

Screenshots