Steel Panthers Series Retrospective (Part Three)

By Patrick S. Baker

Steel Panthers World War II

From the first, Steel Panthers had an active fan-base which developed new scenarios and posted them online to share with other fans.  One of these super-fans was David Heath.

After founding The Gamers Network, an online game review site, in 1998, Heath went on to play-test some games for SSI as well. He also made friends with Joel Billings, the founder of SSI, and Gary Grigsby. Wanting to do more in the gaming world and “loving Steal Panthers”. Heath had several conversations with Billings and Grigsby, finally convinced them to give him the source code for Steel Panthers to develop “a fan base edition of the Steel Panthers Series”.

The result of this unprecedented move was 1999’s Steel Panthers World War II, also called SPWW2. Released by the Camo Workshop and using a greatly modified Steel Panthers II source code, SPWW2 was an authorized stand-alone expansion of Steel Panthers II.

The pack contained several hundred scenarios set mainly during the Second World War, but also had some battles of the interwar years. It also had a number of historical and alternate history scenarios and campaigns. Further, SPWW2 had several improvements, including an expanded number of units and terrain types, an improved AI and random scenario/campaign generator, a scenario editor, campaign editor and unit editor allowing for maximum customization of the game by players.

While the player needed either the Steel Panthers II, or Steel Panthers III, CD-ROM in the CD drive for the program to work, the new game, at a then hefty 28 megabytes, was downloadable freeware.

Steel Panthers: World at War

After his experience in developing SPWW2, Heath went on to found Matrix Games, Inc in 1999 and surprising no one, the first project developed and released in 2000 by Matrix was Steel Panthers: World at War (ST:WaW). An update of Steel Panthers I, SP:WaW came with better graphics, improved sound, considerably expanded unit library and improved combat and command modeling, ST: WaW, was also free for download like SPWW2, with over 1000 scenarios and more than 50 single player campaigns provided. If players want still more, they could buy the “General’s Edition” which had four mega-campaigns, covering the North Africa, the Eastern Front, Western Europe and the Pacific theaters of the war.

Notable additions to the game play was the capability to plan parachute drops, glider landings, infiltrate special operation forces behind enemy lines and choose whether to take opportunity fire or not.Steel Panthers Main Battle Tank

Steel Panthers Main Battle Tank (SPMBT) was released on 14 June 2002 by the Camo Workshop and Shrapnel Games. STMBT was a super-modification of Steel Panthers II: Modern Battles.  New features were multiple charge and top attack Anti-Tank Guided Missiles (ATGM), Infra-Red Screening Smoke anti-ATGM countermeasures, cluster munitions artillery, artillery scatterable mines, and reactive armor on tanks.

There were 93 countries and non-state actors in the new database covering warfare from 1946 to 2020. The game-play was very familiar to anyone who had spent any time with Steel Panthers. Further, like the other super-mods, SPMBT was available for free download with an enhanced version with more scenarios and campaigns for purchase.

Going Windows 

In 2005, SPMBT was released for Windows; this release was followed by SPWW2 in 2006. The games were released as winSPMBT and winSPWW2. On top of the move to the Window Operating System, something that should have been done in 1997, both games received a plethora of new features. For example, much higher resolutions, updated game screens, new terrain types, an improved game color palette, rail-lines, vehicle reversing, etc. In addition, new scenarios, maps, and campaigns were also added.

Camo Workshop and Shrapnel continued to offer the basic games for free with upgraded versions for purchase. Further, they continued and still patch the game as new versions of Windows become widely utilized. The last patches for the games were released in early 2021.

A “spiritual successor” to Steel Panthers, referenced as Steel Tigers, was announced in 2015. The new game was being developed by 2by3 Games. In 2018, a short blog post said the game was still in development, but nothing much else has been said about this “spiritual successor” since then.

Still, with the huge base of super-fans developing and releasing scenarios and campaigns and Camo Workshop and Shrapnel continuing to patch winSPMBT and winSPWW2, the Steel Panthers series is still alive and thriving.

All the Steel Panthers games featured that singular combination of straightforwardness in design, with depth and variation in implementation. So, whether you’re battling German Tigers with American Shermans in 1944, or Japanese Marines fighting Chinese tanks in 2020, the game still informs players about the trials facing soldiers in combat in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries.

Patrick S. Baker is a former US Army Field Artillery officer and retired Department of Defense employee. He has degrees in History, Political Science and Education.  He has been writing history, game reviews and science-fiction professionally since 2013. Some of his other work can find some at , Lorelei Signal and .