Total War: Shogun — After Strategy

Total War: Shogun's Story — How an Abandoned Monkey RPG Led to a Landmark Series

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Total War: Shogun’s Story: How an Abandoned Monkey RPG Led to a Landmark Series

Shogun: Total War reached North American shops on 12 June 2000 and European ones four days later, published by Electronic Arts. It is the game that put Creative Assembly on the map, yet it started as a fallback. Before it, the studio had planned an RPG based on the TV series Monkey, itself adapted from the Chinese classic Journey to the West. That project was dropped, and a modest strategy game took its place. Here is how that detour produced one of the best-known names in strategy gaming, and why the popular version of the story gets it wrong.

Creative Assembly first planned an RPG based on the TV series Monkey, to be made in Singapore.
That RPG was abandoned, and the team made Shogun: Total War instead. Shogun did not “fund” the RPG.
Released on 12 June 2000 (North America) by Electronic Arts, it was the first Total War game.
Seven clans fight over Sengoku-era Japan on a turn-based campaign map, with real-time battles fought by sprite armies on 3D terrain.
An expansion, The Mongol Invasion, followed in August 2001, alongside the Warlord Edition bundle.

Creative Assembly Before Shogun

Tim Ansell founded Creative Assembly in 1987, and for years the studio lived on conversions and licensed sports titles. From 1993 it worked under the EA Sports label; in a 2011 retrospective with Funambulism, Mike Simpson recalls a team of about five people producing the first PC version of FIFA. Simpson himself was hired in 1996 as creative director, with the brief to start a second team doing something different.

That something was supposed to be a role-playing game based on Monkey, developed in Singapore to take advantage of large government tax breaks. By Simpson’s account, those breaks turned out to be less attractive than they looked on paper, and the RPG was shelved before it went anywhere. Creative Assembly’s own 30th-anniversary trivia, published in August 2017, tells the same story: Shogun started life as an RPG based on Journey to the West, and the team very nearly relocated to Singapore. Nothing in either account suggests that Shogun was made to pay for the RPG: one project replaced the other.

From a “B-Grade C&C Clone” to Shogun

With the RPG gone, the team looked at what was selling. Command & Conquer had spawned a wave of imitators, so the plan became, in Simpson’s words, “a B-grade C&C clone”: a cheap 2D real-time strategy game. Two things changed it along the way. First, 3dfx graphics cards made real 3D terrain possible on PC. Second, the battles on their own felt too short and too disconnected, so a campaign map was added to give each fight a reason. Artist Nick Tresadern, who joined when the Total War team was about seven people, told PC Gamer in 2020 that the map was there so players would choose which army to attack and why.

Shogun was announced in early 1999, a demo went out in January 2000, and EA published the full game that June. The “Total War” brand existed before the Japanese setting was even settled, which is why the studio could move the formula to Europe so quickly with Medieval: Total War in 2002.

What You Actually Played in 2000

On the campaign map, Japan is split into provinces during the Sengoku period, the “Warring States” era of rival daimyo. You pick one of seven clans and move armies and agents on a Risk-style board where each turn is a season. Provinces produce koku, the rice-based currency that pays for castles, ports, dojos and troops. Emissaries handle diplomacy, while ninja and shinobi spy and assassinate. Portuguese traders bring arquebuses, and converting to Christianity unlocks better trade at the cost of unrest. Neglect public order and a province can rise against you.

Battles switch to real time. Each unit is a block of 2D sprites on a 3D battlefield, and memory was so tight that soldiers walking left were simply a mirrored sprite, Tresadern recalls. Morale, fatigue and weather mattered: in heavy rain, early arquebuses could fail to fire, and units whose morale broke would rout from the field. The battle AI drew on Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, military historian Stephen Turnbull advised on the period, and Jeff van Dyck wrote the score. GameSpot named it Best Strategy Game of 2000.

The Mongol Invasion and What Came Next

Released in August 2001, the expansion added a playable Mongol faction, new units, two campaigns and a map editor. Its premise imagined Kublai Khan’s fleet reaching Japan instead of being wrecked by storms. North America got it as part of the Warlord Edition, which bundled the base game and the expansion. Creative Assembly returned to the setting a decade later with Total War: Shogun 2, released on 15 March 2011. Rome: Total War (2004) was the entry that finally replaced the sprites with 3D soldiers.

Our Take: The Abandoned RPG Was the Lucky Break

What matters in this story is not the lost Monkey game, but how little the winning idea was planned. The popular version, in which Shogun was a cash cow built to finance a dream RPG, flatters the RPG and misreads the studio. In practice, Creative Assembly had built its name on conversions and sports games, not role-playing games, and the project depended on a tax incentive that did not survive a closer look. Shogun worked because a small team accepted a narrow, cheap brief, then let the design change when the hardware and the playtests told them to. The campaign map, now the heart of every Total War, began as a fix for battles that felt pointless.

That is the real lesson for the series today. The difference between Shogun and a forgotten C&C clone was not budget but focus: one setting, one clear tension between the map and the battlefield. Nostalgia for the RPG that never happened is understandable, but the version of Creative Assembly that dropped it is the one that built a series still running 26 years later.

Conclusion

Total War: Shogun began as a replacement for a cancelled RPG and a deliberately modest RTS, then grew into the template for every Total War since. The Monkey RPG stayed on the drawing board, and nothing suggests the studio ever went back to it. Shogun’s koku, clans, sprite armies and season-by-season campaign are where the series’ identity comes from.

Sources

Shogun: Total War did not fund the Monkey RPG — it replaced it

Tue, 23 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Shogun: Total War, the hacked-together RTS that replaced the Monkey RPG

For years, a story has circulated about the origins of Shogun: Total War. Creative Assembly supposedly hacked together a quick, cheap RTS to get back on its feet and pay for its real project, a Monkey RPG. This article actually told that story in its first version. Half of it is true: Shogun did start as a modest strategy game, almost a throwaway. The other half is false. By the time Shogun started, the Monkey RPG no longer existed. It was not funded — it was replaced.

The Monkey RPG was supposed to be developed in Singapore to take advantage of tax breaks.
Those breaks proved disappointing: the RPG was abandoned, and the team moved on to an RTS.
That RTS was meant to be a “B-grade C&C clone”, quick and cheap to make.
3D graphics cards, a lowered camera and a campaign map added along the way turned it into the first Total War, released June 12, 2000 by Electronic Arts.

The throwaway-game legend

The popular version has everything going for it. A small studio on the brink of bankruptcy, an RPG dream put on hold, a samurai game knocked together to pay the bills. Then a surprise hit that made the dream unnecessary. The old version of this article even added that the RPG was abandoned because players were demanding a Shogun sequel.

No serious source tells that story. The quote about the “B-grade game” was attributed there to Mike Simpson in PC Gamer. It actually comes from a long retrospective Simpson gave to the site Funambulism in 2011. And in that interview, Simpson talks neither about bankruptcy nor about a Shogun tasked with paying for another game.

What actually killed the Monkey RPG

Recruited by Creative Assembly to set up a second team alongside the EA Sports games, Simpson tells a very different sequence. That team’s first project is a role-playing game based on Monkey, the TV series adapted from the Chinese novel Journey to the West. It is to be produced in Singapore, where big tax advantages await the studio.

Those advantages turn out to be far less interesting than expected, and the team stays in the United Kingdom. The RPG stops right there. The anecdotes published for Creative Assembly’s 30th anniversary, relayed by CGMagazine in 2017, say the same thing: Shogun began as an RPG inspired by the novel, and the studio very nearly moved to Singapore. So the dream did not die under the weight of Shogun’s success. It died because of a tax setup that did not hold up.

A “B-grade C&C clone”, genuinely hacked together

With the RPG buried, the team looks at what sells. Krush Kill ‘n’ Destroy, a Command & Conquer clone, sold very well. Tim Ansell, the studio boss, then asks Simpson for a quick, cheap game, a “B-title”. Simpson sums it up: the team sets out to make a B-grade C&C clone, in 2D and top-down.

The hacked-together side is no legend. The team is tiny: around seven people when artist Nick Tresadern joins, according to PC Gamer. Simpson talks about around fifteen people at the heart of the project, maybe twenty by the end. The starting plan is not ambitious at all. That is what makes what follows interesting.

How the clone became Total War

Three changes derail the initial plan, in the right direction. 3dfx graphics cards spread and make real 3D terrain possible. Then the camera is lowered to the horizon, at general’s height, instead of hovering over the battlefield. Finally, back-to-back battles feel too short and devoid of stakes.

The team therefore adds a turn-based campaign map. “The campaign map was meant to give context to the battles,” Tresadern explained to PC Gamer in 2020: the player chooses which province to invade and which army to face. On the field, soldiers remain 2D sprites laid over 3D scenery. But morale, fatigue and weather already matter, to the point that a downpour can stop arquebuses from firing. Historian Stephen Turnbull advises the team on the Sengoku period. Electronic Arts publishes the game on June 12, 2000 in North America and June 16 in Europe, and GameSpot names it best strategy game of the year.

Our take: the hack job was the right plan

What matters here is not saving the reputation of the lost RPG. The throwaway-game legend reverses the roles: it makes the RPG the real project and Shogun a necessary evil. In reality, the RPG rested on a fragile tax calculation, and Shogun on a modest order nobody tried to lock down.

That lack of constraints is exactly what paid off. A small team under little pressure was able to change the camera, the engine and the structure mid-project. The campaign map, the heart of every Total War since, was born as a fix for battles without stakes. Yet the legend only remembers the sacrificed dream. For players, the real lesson is elsewhere: the series’ best ideas came out of a project everyone thought was disposable.

For the full account of the game’s development and content, our feature The rise of Total War Shogun in the game industry details clans, koku and the Mongol Invasion expansion. Simpson’s role is told in the Mike Simpson story.

Total War: Shogun — After Strategy

Total War: Shogun's Story — How an Abandoned Monkey RPG Led to a Landmark Series

Total War: Shogun’s Story: How an Abandoned Monkey RPG Led to a Landmark Series

Creative Assembly Before Shogun

From a “B-Grade C&C Clone” to Shogun

What You Actually Played in 2000

The Mongol Invasion and What Came Next

Our Take: The Abandoned RPG Was the Lucky Break

Conclusion

See also

Sources

Shogun: Total War did not fund the Monkey RPG — it replaced it

Shogun: Total War, the hacked-together RTS that replaced the Monkey RPG

The throwaway-game legend

What actually killed the Monkey RPG

A “B-grade C&C clone”, genuinely hacked together

How the clone became Total War

Our take: the hack job was the right plan

See also

Sources