The company was founded by Joel Billings, a wargame enthusiast. He hired programmers John Lyon, who wrote Computer Bismarck, and Ed Williger, who wrote Computer Ambush. Both games were written in BASIC as were many more of SSI's games. Computer Bismarck was released for the Apple II in January 1980 and for the TRS-80 later in the year.
SSI also expanded into role-playing games in 1984 with titles like Wizard's Crown, Questron and the Phantasie series.
In 1987, SSI acquired the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons license from TSR and published 30 AD&D titles over the following years, starting with Pool of Radiance in 1988.
SSI was acquired by Mindscape in 1994, spent time as part of Mattel, and as of 2003 is a brand name of Ubi Soft.