by Lloyd “Gus” Sabin, 26 February 2026
“What the hell are you doing?” asked one of my good buddies as he stormed into my room unannounced, staring at my French trebuchets destroying an English castle on my monitor. Startled, I jumped back from my PC, hitting my knee on my computer table and cursing.
“Dammit don’t you knock? It’s 10pm, why are you here?”
“A few of us are going out for drinks. Wanna come?”
“I have to work tomorrow, so thanks but no.” I turned back to my PC to continue what I was doing.
“Suit yourself. Enjoy…whatever the hell that is that you’re doing.” He giggled like an idiot and walked out of my bedroom, left the door open and left my apartment with a few of my other buddies. It was a cold fall night in 1999. I turned back to the warm inviting glow of my digital companion for the evening, which would eventually become one of my favorite games of all time: Age of Empires II – The Age of Kings.
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I loved this game so much I even had the box on display in my bedroom. I was a 25 year old man at the time. It captured my imagination like nothing that had come before. Most likely because my gaming up to that point was on the Commodore Vic-20 (with tape drive), the Commodore 64 and 128 (with disk drives), and the Commodore Amiga. And an honorable mention to my first computer ever, a Texas Instruments Ti994a…but I never played a game on it.
I had loved games on most of those machines, traded them with my friends as I entered teenage-dom and have nothing but fond memories to this day. But none of those games were like Age of Kings.
Yes, I played the classic Lords of the Rising Sun and Wings by Cinemaware on my Amiga, which could be loosely described as games about war. I played Impossible Mission and Beachhead and Commandos on the Commodore 64, along with hundreds of other war-related games. Going even further back to the early 80s, I played tons of cartridge-based games, not on the Atari 2600 but on my Gemini video game system. I can still smell that console and the cartridges for it – Pitfall II was one of my favorites, along with Enduro, Barnstorming and River Raid. So yes some of these games can be loosely associated with war and history but none could really, seriously be called wargames.
Not that Age of Kings was a hardcore wargame either in 1999. But it did something that every other game I played up until that point did not do – it captured the love and affection I had for history, huge swathes of it, covering around 1000 years. If I wanted to lead an army of 15th century mounted samurai, I could do that. If I wanted to besiege an ancient, dusty Byzantine fortress with a marauding army of Turks, I could try it. And if I was interested in very late era Roman military history, or very early Renaissance military history, Age of Kings provided such a huge variety of factions to try, units to experiment with and scenarios to test that I could have made a career from just playing that game alone.
It did not model history with dedicated precision – it did not even try to, which was the beauty of it. What it did was take the attributes of history that dorks like me loved and ran with them. Intrigued by 14th century French artillery? Try out this cannon on that wooden wall over there. Fascinated by armored horsemen? Take a look at this cataphract. Try it out. Try ten of them out against that group of archers over there. Fun ain’t it? Historically accurate? Who cares! Age of Kings did not have to get the gold filigree on a knight’s helmet perfect because of what it did do – make civilizations and ancient weapons and conflicts from 1000 years ago addicting and accessible, jumping right out of the monitor and into my imagination. I did not need a masters degree in history to understand what was going on in the game…but Age of Kings lit a fire under my butt that did indeed lead me to get an actual masters degree in history a few years later.
It was one of many entry-points into history that molded my still young brain at the time. Along with a metric-ton of books, movies and even music, Age of Kings and the 1000s of hours I invested into it over years shaped my personality, likes and dislikes to an extent. The game came with me when I moved out of that nerd-bachelor-pad apartment I shared with my buddies, and was one of the primary reasons I have always had an office of my own since I moved in with my girlfriend, then fiancé, then wife – a man needs his gamecave! There is no sharing physical space when I am attempting to finally conquer Britannia as a Norman king. Or unify Japan. Or set up trade with the Inca.
With that kind of love and affection in my heart I indeed squealed when the Age of Kings Definitive Edition was released in late 2019…20 years after I, and probably a billion other nerds, fell in love with the original. The success of this newest edition is insane all these years later, and the formula has not changed: offer dozens of different playable factions, make multiplayer available, throw in some cool little unit functions and mechanics…but also make the history of heretofore obscure parts of the world less obscure. With continuous releases, modern day historical gamers can play not just as the French or English or Normans, but as Georgians and Armenians and Khmer and Thai and Malians, amongst dozens of others. It really is quite incredible, and on modern systems Age of Kings still looks amazing with constant graphics updates. The game is just smooth, fun, buttery historical gaming perfection.
So when one of my (now-grown) children or The Wife busts into my office when I am playing Age of Kings, they can look at the monitor and don’t have to ask ‘what the hell am I doing’…because this game has been around and a literal part of me since before almost all of these actual people were. They cannot recall a time that it has not been around.
That is quite a testament to Age of Kings, and I am quietly happy that a post like this is not just a nostalgic trip, but coverage of a living, growing, lovable game franchise that is still capturing imaginations everywhere.
I love you Age of Kings, and I don’t care who knows.
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