When we hear the word Atari most of us associate it with Pong or Space Invaders or just about any of the many classic games that we grew up with. But over the years, as technology changed and as gamers changed their playing preferences as well, Atari was also forced to change.

Abandoning the Atari gaming system, instead of closing its doors down, Atari moved its games to the very popular Nintendo system. But even the original Nintendo became obsolete soon enough and once again Atari had to once again look to the future. Branching out over multiple gaming platforms and incorporating a wide variety of genres, Atari has remained a force in the video game community for over 25 years now. Some of their more recent titles include the racing game Test Drive Unlimited, Neverwinter Night 2 and Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 among many others.

Codename: Panzers Cold War is Atari's latest release and this time Atari tackles what some have called it a failed genre - the Cold War. I have played a couple of Cold War based games in the past and I wasn't very impressed. It seems that they took the "What if..." concept to extremely farfetched extremes. This is one reason that I'm looking very forward to playing Codename: Panzers Cold War. From what I've been reading about the game and from some of the screenshots that I've seen the game seems to have a down-to-earth concept and a realistic "What if..." scenario behind it. What if the Soviets wanted to annex the entire European theatre? Would anyone even care after such devastation was caused just a few years prior during WWII? And if anyone did care, could they actually stop the fierce Soviet war machine? This seems to be where the game is heading from looking at the game box but if I'm not supposed to judge a book by its cover I better stop speculating and start playing. I'll be back!