There was a period in the mid to late 90’s where you couldn’t look at a shelf of PC games and not see at least a half dozen Real Time Strategy (RTS) games. After the immense success of Warcraft 2 and Command and Conqueror the genre exploded, causing every publisher and developer to stop in their tracks and try to cash in on the craze that was taking the PC world by storm be it noble efforts like Age of Empires or utter schlock like Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3.

It’s quite easy to see where the appeal of the RTS game comes from. It provides some of the depth of strategy that the Turned Based Strategy like Master of Orion and Civilizations before them but has the sort of instant gratification that players of more action oriented gamers are uses to. A single player Civilization game can suck up hours to perfect and multiplayer affairs could take days or even months to complete. With an RTS all your actions are immediate, there’s a sense that you can see what a given upgrade will bring in terms of cause and effect and campaigns can be as short a few minutes given the players skill in both single and multiplayer.

While the RTS has been a predominantly a North American PC phenomenon (yeah yeah I know about Korean Starcraft players but that seems more like a freak occurrence than anything) it seems odd then that the roots of the modern day RTS are seeded in a Genesis game made by Japanese developers. While older PC games such as Stonkers, The Ancient Art of War and Modern Wars could be classified as RTS they lack many of the elements the modern RTS game employs today that, arguably, Herzog Zwei brought to the table.

Developed by TechnoSoft Herzog Zwei’s creation is a mystery. TechnoSoft is best known in Japan from their Thunderfoce series of shooters and while technically a sequel (the name, translated from German, means “Duke 2”) the original Herzog which was released for the Japanese MSX system had few similarities to Herzog Zwei. While the game maintained much of the shooter aesthetics and some of the gameplay (we’ll get into that later) of TecchnoSofts games its base building and unit elements confused people when it was first release back in 1990.

The premise of the game is quite simple. Two warring factions represented by Red and Blue colours vie for control of one of 8 unique maps. How that is achieved though is quite different than your typical Genesis game at the time. Deviating from the normal clicking arrow of modern RTS games players controlled a transforming plane/robot. This unit serves as a commander who can create units and carry them from once place or another.

The strategy of Herzog Zwei comes from the introduction of resource management. Each map is littered with numerous mini bases that act as refueling stations. Each unit (including your commander unit) has a finite amount of energy before they become in operable, thus, it is required for you to conquer a string of bases that lead up to your opponents before you can perform the final rush. This made the game more thoughtful then your typical shooter and brought in a level of strategy that while not as complex as your typical strategy game added a new wrinkle to the genre. Often times there are obstacles to these bases, such as bodies of water or canyons, forcing players to create the right kind of units to attack them.

Further more resource management comes into play for your unit creation. On top of the cost of the kinds of units you make Herzog Zwei is different from today’s RTS games in that you don’t have direct control over your units. While your commander ship can pick up and carry units ultimately their actions are determined by what “programming” you give them which can increase or decrease their cost significantly. Units can be told to attack bases, patrol an area or simply sit idle waiting for incoming enemies and from there it’s up to you as the commander to utilize the units and their actions as best you can.

While playing the computer is fun to start Herzog Zwei really game into its own as a multiplayer experience. As shocked as you might be to fathom a 16 bit console prehistoric RTS to have multiplayer Herzog Zwei offered a fully fleshed out two player split screen experience. Whole playing on the same screen prevented the use of sneak attacks and allowed players to keep tabs on the other Herzog Zwei’s slow rolling game play still benefitted from the near cat-and-mouse nature of holding bases, defending them and advancing your units. Safe to say that Herzog Zwei’s simple yet profound multiplayer experience brought upon the LAN party Starcraft sessions we’d see in the late 90’s.

It’s little wonder that Herzog Zwei beame a game that was discovered well after it’d been released. During the late 80’s and most of the 90’s the rift between PC and Console gamer was definite. PC games were seen to be for more “heady” genres like RPGs and Adventure games while Console gamers were looking for arcade recreations, something that the Genesis was touted to be able to do early on. When Herzog Zwei was released in the early days of the Genesis it must have confused the few people who picked it up. It looked, aesthetically, like a Thunderfoce game and even the “commander” unit could fly and shoot like a shooter. However when the deeper elements, the refueling, the unit control, came into play people must’ve though that this was the slowest shooter known to man. In fact in my research for this article I discovered that these complaints were brought up in an old EGM review that gave the game an average score of 4!

However like so many cult games its gameplay and design are one that requires patience and discovery to truly enjoy. Herzog Zwei may have seemed like an odd title when it was released, but for those who gave it a chance they discovered an engrossing hybrid game style that would set the foundation of one of the most successful genres in the world of video games.