Strategic Simulations, Inc. /

Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI) was a video game developer and publisher with over 100 titles to its credit since its founding in 1979. It 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. 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. Computer Bismarck was released for the Apple II in January 1980 and for the TRS-80 later in the year. Chuck Kroegel, the co-author with David Landry of many of the early SSI wargames, joined the company as an employee in 1983 and led product development for over ten years. In 1982 SSI launched their RapidFire line. Although the name implies action titles, in fact it was simply a branding of games being written by 3rd party authors. The initial series consisted of Cytron Masters, The Cosmic Balance and Galactic Gladiators. Later titles included Epidemic!, a real time