Hannibal is one of the few games that focus on the Second Punic War-- you control the formidable Carthagian army -- on elephant backs -- with the ultimate goal to conquer Rome. Hannibal is a turn-based historical strategy game. You play the role of Carthaginian General Hannibal, commanding his armies in his struggle with the Roman Empire during the Second Punic War. You manage the economy and your military forces over a world map. You recruit armies (infantry, cavalry, war elephants, navy), siege cities, win battles, and expand Carthage's political influence from Africa to Europe to the Middle East.

Hannibal was in development since 1989. The historical strategy game was produced by the Swiss production team Blackpencil and published by Starbyte Software in 1993. There were four releases: Amiga 1993, DOS Germany 1993, DOS USA 1993 by Micro League Multimedia Inc., and DOS USA 1995 by General Admission Software. Hannibal's PC version was popular in the USA where it was often subtitled as “Master of the Beast” and may still be considered a cult game. Loading time was long on the Amiga; the DOS version worked better, according to player comments, but was not as organized. There were also a couple of diskmag versions in 1994 and 1995.

The development of Hannibal sparked the birth of the Blackpencil team in Basel with Andreas Seebeck (programming and telephone technology), Ingo Mesche (art director), and Claude Cueni (script and realization). Claude Cueni was the head of the team that not only produced a historically quite accurate gaming experience, but at the same time also started making TV quiz shows for Swiss TV. Their master piece was the first interactive TV computer telephone game in Europe with Minigame (1993-2013) for Swiss TV. Later, they also made more games like the world-famous Catch the Sperm. Claude Cueni is also well known as the author of many novels, short stories, autobiographical and historical novels.

Cueni describes Hannibal as a historical trade and war simulation that is based on the Second Punic War (218-201 BC). It features 756 historical cities with cultivated areas and population figures according to the studies of Professor Karl Julius Alwin Beloch (1854-1929). The game came in a large cardboard box with artwork, six 3.5-inch floppy disks, and a printed booklet (for DOS and Amiga) that included an instruction manual. The booklet has 48 pages with two columns per page and a colorful, illustrative picture of Hannibal’s elephants traversing the snowy alpine mountains. The manual explains mousecontrol and GUI first, with instructions on how to play. And this is followed by a description of Carthago and the Punic Wars. Explanations of historical battle tactics follow on the next pages, where the individual battle formations are depicted by means of diagrams. A CH-Ludens blog text by Beat Suter offers a more detailed description of Hannibal's booklet.

A review states with some irony: "The game is realistic in the sense that travels, and sieges can, and do, take forever. But overall, it is an interesting game that raises the ever-controversial issue of realism vs. fun in wargames." PC Joker called it in 1994 the "most beautiful historical strategy game to date. Rarely has Rome been conquered in such a beautiful and exciting way!"