Strategic Simulations, Inc
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| Public | |
| Industry | Video game |
| Fate | Acquired by Ubisoft in 2001 |
| Founded | 1979 |
| Founder | Joel Billings |
| Headquarters | Mountain View, California, U.S. |
Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI) was a video game developer and publisher with over 100 titles to its credit since its founding in 1979. The company was especially noted for its numerous wargames, its official computer game adaptations of Dungeons & Dragons, and for the groundbreaking Panzer General series.
The company was founded by Joel Billings, a wargame enthusiast, who in summer 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, 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.
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