Walter Bright recoded his 1977 mainframe game EmpireinC on an IBM PC. With low commercial expectations, he submitted an announcement to January 1984 BYTE magazine's "Software Received" section, and received a flood of orders. After writing to many software companies (including Broderbund, Sirius Software, Simon & Schuster, Sublogic, Epyx, and MicroProse), he licensed the game to a small software company named Interstel. Mark Baldwin was brought in to coauthor the game redesigning it for the commercial market. Starting around 1987, Empire: Wargame of the Century on the Atari ST,[1]Amiga, Commodore 64, Apple II, Macintosh, and DOS was produced.[citation needed] Interstel warned customers "Don't buy Empire! It is a Krellan plot to reduce productivity".[2]
Computer Gaming World stated that Empire was "a fascinating grand strategic wargame, more sophisticated than Risk, but easier to play than Third Reich".[2] The magazine's full review noted the improved UI, saying "the playability of an already successful system has been significantly enhanced".[3] The game would later receive the magazine's "Game of the Year" award for 1988;[4] in 1989 the magazine named Empire to its Hall of Fame for games readers rated highly over time, with a final score of 9.71 out of 12,[5] in 1990 readers voted for the game as their "All-Time Favorite",[6] a 1991 magazine survey of strategy and war games gave it four and a half stars out of five,[7] and a 1993 survey in the magazine gave the game three stars out of five.[8]Compute! agreed with the warning on the game box of its addictiveness, stating that the game combined aspects of exploration and strategy. The magazine also praised the UI, and called the game "superb" and "addictive".[9]Jerry PournelleofBYTE also agreed about its addictiveness. While stating that the UI could be improved, he noted that Empire avoided the need to micromanage units that made games like Anacreon: Reconstruction 4021 tedious. Pournelle concluded that Empire tempts players to play a little longer and find out what is going to happen next.[10] The Atari ST version of the game was reviewed in 1988 in Dragon #131 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 4 out of 5 stars.[11] The Lessers reviewed the MS-DOS version of the game in 1989 in Dragon #142, and gave the game 4 out of 5 stars.[12]
