Throughout the 1990s, real-time strategy games reigned supreme on PC. Games like Dune II and Warcraft established conventions that would define the genre, to be expanded on by later releases like Age of Empires. But before any of those groundbreaking PC games, the one that started it all appeared in an unlikely place — the Sega Genesis.
Widely considered to be the first real-time strategy game, Herzog Zwei is itself a sequel. Its predecessor, Herzog, launched on the MSX and PC-88 computers in Japan in 1988. While Herzog contained some of the seeds of what would become the RTS, like buying friendly units to attack enemies, it’s now seen largely as a sort of dress rehearsal for the real deal.
