'Tigers on the Prowl', 'Panthers in the Shadows'

[Embis]

These were the first computer wargames I remember playing, published by HPS they ran in Dos, you can  remind yourself what they looked like here My PC was just at the edge of the minimum requirements  which was a whopping: 

IBM-compatible 386/16 PC or higher
VGA graphics or better
580k free RAM
1 MB high memory
4 MB hard disk space
Mouse


..I love the fact that one of these minimum requirements is a mouse  

When I got a 486 and a hard drive big enough to load three of these games from 3 &1/2" floppies ..wow.... My friends were jealous.. 

Had so many hours of fun with these games and I loved the detail, My next steps after Microsofts 'Close Combat' and SPI's 'Steel Panthers', would have been 'Squad battles Vietnam' and 'Panzer Campaigns Smolensk'.. I pretty much stayed with JTS games thereafter.

• But when did 'Tigers on the Prowl', 'Panthers in the Shadows' and 'Dragons in the Mist' come out? 
  

I have a feeling they were the first 'serious' computer wargame they must predate Close Combat which was out in '96 but possibly not by much.

• Anyone know of a computer wargame that predates them?
  

 (apart from the program I wrote on a Saturday afternoon in 1982 on a ZX81 to roll dice and look up results in tables to speed up my play of Avalon Hills Panzergruppe Guderian )

[Xerxes77]

I remember reading about HPS's Tigers on the Prowl in one of the magazines of the time, probably in PC Gamer. William Trotter had his "The Desktop General" column which I used to read avidly, getting acquainted with many of the early computer wargames and intrigued by the blend of gaming and history they provided.

According to Mobygames, TotP was released on 1994. My first wargame was Panzer General, released the same year. There were several others that came before, though. I still own a boxed copy of SSI's Definitive Wargame Collection 2 which includes a few earlier ones like the V for Victory series.

[Outlaw Josey Wales]

I had 5 V for Victory titles. Before that, I had War in Russia and Pacific War, my first war game title. My first title overall as a Baseball game. Don't remember the name. I do remember you could edit the stat line to make players better or worse. One of my friends brought it to my attention. He said watch this. He changed Len Sakata's stat line. He had something like 20 at bats that year. So, he changed his HRs from 1 to 6 or 7 and he was hitting HRs almost every other at bat. Had a good time laughing at our buddy, who was big into BB, go crazy. When we drafted for another season, Sakata's stat line wasn't changed and he didn't hit squat. We had some good laugh's over that.

[Embis]

 I still own a boxed copy of SSI's Definitive Wargame Collection 2 which includes a few earlier ones like the V for Victory series.

The V for Victory series, I had completely forgotten about those, I had a couple of them.. must hunt down some screen shots of them.. cant remember what they looked like.

[Embis]

..Found a YouTube video of a V for victory game... we didn't seem to complain much about graphics in those days

[Xerxes77]

..Found a YouTube video of a V for victory game... we didn't seem to complain much about graphics in those days

Indeed we didn't, and then there were the interfaces ...  

I also remember playing a few of the SSG's "Battlefront" titles... in particular the coincidentally named "Panzer Battles". I think these were late eighties:

[Sean]

I had a group of early C64 games that I really enjoyed playing.
I used to play them with a friend using an early version of Linked Play using 2 Tvs and 1 Commodore 64.
We turned our respective Tvs off whilst the other player moved.
With the games Fog of War and our method of play the game played very realistically ,had no idea what the other player was up to until I encountered his units in my field of view .It played like a game run by a referee.

The games were

Panzer Strike C64
follow on games
Typhoon of Steel
Overrun!

I liked the ww2 themed "Panzer Strike" the most but enjoyed the ATGMs as well in the modern "Overrun!".
I was soso on "Typhoon of Steel".
Mostly played "Panzer Strike" 2 player and "Overrun!" solo.

Absolutely brilliant games.
You could build your own OOBs and play Meeting Engagements easily.

I really liked the Unit Graphics, the Nato Infantry Crossed Rectangle and the Half Tracks in particular.

[vendetta]

I had Tigers on the Prowl and Panthers in the Shadows but found it hard to get opponents for those games, plus, at the time I was into the learning curve of these battles. I also remember, I think, an SSI or SSG game of Sniper. I enjoyed the game, which we played on a TRS80 computer, and it took all day to play as individual players took turns playing their character. We went through a lot of beer those days playing that game. That is really the first computer war game I remember playing.