For various reasons (needing actions to match words, nostalgia, and just looking for a good streaming option that’s more of a pick up/put down kind of thing) I decided last week to dust off a classic of ‘90s wargaming. As you may have guessed from the post title, after waffling between several choices, I settled on Panzer General as the first entry in my new Retro Wargaming Wednesday series.
For a lot of gamers around my age (including me), Panzer General was our first foray into the turn-based strategy games on PC. It sold enough that they even ported it to PS1 (with copies still pretty easy to find on Ebay) and the 3DO. I’ve put a fair amount of hours into the game over the years, but never the kind of deep-dive really required to complete it.
Now a couple of interesting things to note about trying to get this 29-year-old game (first released for DOS in 1994, so yes, that was 29 years ago) running on a semi-modern operating system. First off, you can’t go out and just buy Panzer General anymore. It’s not on Steam, nor is it on GOG, despite two other games in the Five Star General series (Fantasy General and Pacific General) being available there. Naturally there are various Abandonware sites on which you can find copies of the game, and the DOS version is playable in a browser via the Classic Reload site, plus a fan remake of both Panzer General and Allied General called Panzer General Forever which makes the games available for more modern hardware, but by necessity has a different AI, and loses some of the flavor of the originals such as the voice overs and battle animations. However, in my case, I still have my old CDROM from the ‘90s, so that’s a moot point. Assuming I can get them running.
Next problem, actually getting this thing to run on a semi-modern PC. The DOS version is relatively easy to get going via DOSBox. The little intro videos for each battle are tied in to CPU speed, but everything else runs fine. However, while some gamers prefer the DOS version, I personally prefer the rebuilt Windows 95 version (which was also on my CD), which has commonality with Allied General. The interface is cleaner, the graphics are slightly prettier, and there are quality of life (QOL) additions such as a career dossier and unlimited saves via the Windows file system!
But, it’s Windows 95. Which is a problem, because 64-bit versions of Windows (which include Windows 10, Window 11, and 64-bit Windows 7) absolutely will not Windows 95 native apps. Compatibility mode doesn’t work, which led me down a path of trying to get a virtual machine up and running. Which led to a reminder of why I’ve tried getting VMs up and running for Win95 before, with little success. Windows’ native VM system got me up and running, but after installing Windows 95 on my new VM, it would crash on startup. Same for Oracle’s allegedly easier to use VirtualBox software. Not to mention that, even if you do get one of these VMs up and running, you’re still stuck on a weird baseline system without the kind of graphics or audio card that most games really need.
Enter PCem. Youtube conveniently recommended a month old video from Linus Tech Tips to me that solved precisely the problem I was having! A hardware emulator for ‘90s era PCs! Granted I still had to spend a few hours tinkering with settings to find the right video and sound card options, doing a few searching to find instructions, plus doing a full Win95 install on my new emulated Pentium 75, but by the end I had a running, operational, fully emulated system running my wargame of choice!
Honestly, if I just had a wild inclination to play Panzer General, the easiest way would probably be to acquire the PS1 version and fire up the PS2 that’s collecting dust in my entertainment center. That said, if you don’t have a PS1 or PS2, the prices seem to have gone up a bit, and by the time you’ve spent money on hardware and game, well, you could probably have PCem up and running quite some time before that.
So how’s it play? Like Panzer General should! Videos run at the correct speed, and I spent a good chunk of time mapping out a correct flowchart of the various campaign decisions that can lead to vastly different experiences from game to game. Eventually, I’m planning to bring a deep dive Let’s Play to Youtube (and Rumble). There’s a surprisingly small amount of content online for this, so I’d like to thing that I can add something interesting here.