Rediscover Steel Panthers!

[Embis]

I know there's a forum for Steel Panthers but traffic there is very light. Its clearly waned in its popularity but I have just returned to this after a long hiatus and I have been pleasantly surprised so I wanted to post here to share my new found enthusiasm, encourage old fans to go back and have another look at this old favourite, and newcomers to go and check it out, Its a real jewel of a game that has become undeservedly less popular.

I first started playing this when it was released in '95, I remember seeing it advertised and thinking.. "I must have that game" It was way ahead of any other computer war game in terms of graphics. I remember I had to buy it from an actual shop! Amazon was only a year old and still selling just books! and nobody at all was selling games as electronic downloads..how could they when most of us were lucky if we had upgraded from a 14k to a top of the range "US Robotics 56k Sportster modem? Remember having to wait for a web page to load?.. Oh, if you are in the UK and your broadband provider is talk talk, you will remember that very well..in fact it happened to you when you arrived here didn't it?  ..but I digress.

..and then I played the tutorial scenario through and I was hooked. It was a revolutionary game in its day and was definitely "the wargame" for many years. Even though you often ended up having to write batch files to make it work well on low end systems the effort was worth it....ahhh the wonderful days of Dos, that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling on its own. Its difficult to imagine having to put that kind of effort into making a game work now, and doubtful that most people would have the know how or the patience to do it anyway... But to get your system running SP1 for an afternoons gaming....that was well worth the effort!

Despite being 25 years old this game is holding its own very well and I suspect it has become less popular just because its old rather than because its less good than anything else out there. We have got more demanding of the  graphics in games, and a first glance at the Shrapnel games web page wouldn't make you feel enthused about the game. (view the screen shots rather than just scanning the web page). The actual game graphics really aren't that bad when you are looking at a screenful and with a decent resolution.

...and of course the game play is just as good as it ever was, its an exciting game to play, PBEM is best of course but the AI is pretty decent and this 25year old game is holding its own very nicely with other similarly scaled games. Whats even better is that the Free Download has all 435 scenarios!! and 4200 photographs of units!!  Obviously with the paid version you get rather more, a map editor, the ability to run the game at higher resolutions, more pbem slots. But the free version will give you a good taste of the game play.

Forget the Matrix version,its absolutely dire, it hasn't been updated for 15 years and it shows. At a maximum resolution of 800x600 the graphics are horrible and at $49.99 so is the price. How they can justify selling an inferior product like this at a higher price point than Shrapnel is beyond me. The Matrix version is overpriced abandonware, don't go near it.

Shrapnel and the Camo Workshop on the other hand, haven't been standing still. The most recent update was less than a year ago, and it was a pretty major overhaul. The current game is a beauty and at max resolution on a decent sized monitor it looks just fine.

So if you haven't met Steel Panthers go and make friends with it. If Steel Panthers is a long lost friend, go back and have a reunion. You might both have aged but you'll pick up like you've never been away and you will soon be wiling away time together and wondering why you didn't do this sooner.

You can find the WW2 version here

and the Modern, Main Battle Tank version here

and then.. when you have done that, answer my post in the Steel Panthers Forum and send me a PBEM file!!