The best military games

Now with 27% more diplomacy and 300% more frustration! Axis and Allies: Iron Blitz (1999) takes everything from the original game and throws in extra scenarios, improved AI, and more ways to accidentally cause a Cold War. Want to play as Italy and change the course of history? Go for it. Just don’t expect your allies to be, you know, allied. ...

Army Men lets you live out your childhood fantasy of plastic soldier warfare without the hassle of crawling under the couch. You control Sarge, a green-tinted war machine with a stiff upper lip and an affinity for melting tan enemies into goo. It's part RTS, part shooter, and 100% nostalgia. The terrain’s made of sandboxes and kitchen floors,...

StarCraft is a classic RTS (Real-Time Strategy) game developed by Blizzard Entertainment and released in 1998 for Windows and Macintosh. StarCraft takes the Warcraft experience to a sci-fi setting with an interesting story, three very different races (the militaristic Humans, the alien Zerg and the religious Protoss) and one of the best gameplay ex...

Board game night went digital in 1998 with Axis and Allies, a strategy title that lets you rewrite WWII—assuming you don’t forget where you left your infantry. Fans of the tabletop classic will feel right at home maneuvering little units across the world map, making huge plans and then watching them fail because you rolled a one. It&rsq...

Seek and Destroy was a shoot'em up published by the well known Epic Megagames in 1996 that tried to change the usual shoot'em up gameplay for the better. Instead of wave after wave of enemies to shoot down, you are given short missions to accomplish with your helicopter or your tank (yes, you can choose). At first, missions could seem a bit repetit...

So you think you're ready to storm Normandy? Think again. 101: The Airborne Invasion of Normandy drops you into the chaos of World War II with all the grace of a paratrooper landing in a barn. This is a tactical strategy game that rewards patience, planning, and a high tolerance for being outflanked. It’s gritty, detailed, and makes you feel ...

Dive, dive! This 1989 DOS simulator puts you in control of a nuclear submarine, though most of the action involves pushing buttons and waiting very patiently. Think of it as the “Microsoft Excel of naval warfare,” only with more torpedoes. The tension builds as you track enemy ships, sneak through sonar nets, and try not to surface into...

The Perfect General is a turn-based strategy military game developed by White Wolf Productions and released in 1991 by Quantun Quality Production. The Perfect General gameplay is quite simple compared to other wargames, but it's based on a solid set of rules and let the players progress at their own pace through missions and scenarios. The Perfect ...

Steel Panthers is the first game in the Steel Panthers series. It was released in 1995 by Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI). This initial release laid the foundation for the series and introduced players to the turn-based tactical wargame experience that would be further developed in subsequent titles. The game focused on armored warfare and featur...