Anno 1602: Creation of a New World,[a] entitled 1602 A.D. in North America, is a 1998 construction and management video game developed by Max Design and published by Sunflowers Interactive.

Set in the early modern period, it requires the player to build colonies on small islands and manage resources, exploration, diplomacy and trade.

Anno 1602 was a commercial blockbuster that attracted buyers outside the usual demographic of German computer games, including a significant percentage of female customers.

It was the German market's best-selling computer game of 1998, and remained the region's highest seller of all time by 2003, with over 1.7 million units sold in German-speaking countries.

Anno 1602 aims to be a mix of simulation and strategy gaming, giving players the chance to create a realistic and lively world, modeling it to their liking.

As the colony grows and spreads, the player gains access to more and more building types and citizens construct bigger and more impressive housing for themselves.

[4] Following a period of financial turmoil in which the company neared bankruptcy,[4] the team began Anno as a spiritual sequel to its earlier title 1869 – Hart am Wind!,[3] a competitor of The Patrician.

[10][11] In the German market, the title debuted in first place on Media Control's computer game sales rankings for the second half of April 1998,[12] and held the position after six weeks on the charts.

[14] The game subsequently received a "Platinum" award from the Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland (VUD),[15] for sales of at least 200,000 units throughout the German-speaking world: Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Remarking on this success at the time, Eva Müller and Hans-Peter Canibol of Focus noted that Sunflowers had become "one of the few German companies that [has] asserted itself in the American-dominated [computer game] market".

The effort resulted in faulty disc shipments,[29] a common issue for extended-capacity CDs,[31] but was ultimately judged by PC Games as "a complete success, despite the availability of cracks".

[43] The Soft Price edition took #6 in October and November 2000 on Media Control's charts for budget-priced games,[44] and stayed in the top 15 for February and March 2001.

[52][53] This type of budget line formed a significant part of the German game market, and journalist Jörg Langer [de] later called it a key to Anno's high lifetime sales.

[50] In the German market, the new release proceeded to sell 50,000 units in its first month on shelves,[55] and it rose to #1 on Media Control's budget charts in February 2002.

[60] Media Control named it Germany's best-selling budget computer game (€28<) of the year, while its sequel Anno 1503 took first place for 2002 among full-price titles.

[66] By 2000, Sunflowers noted a high "proportion of inexperienced players and women in the Anno fan base", which it attributed to the game's design goal of "play without stress".

[67] Der Spiegel's Richard Löwenstein cited Anno as an early computer game to draw female players; he claimed in 2002 that approximately 25% of its buyers were women.

[68] In 2011, Klinge likewise called the game's number of female players "an absolute novelty" before The Sims, and reported that women made up nearly 50% of Anno 1602 customers.

[66] Anno 1602's success was primarily contained to the German market;[69] GameStar reported that, like Gothic, it failed to make an "international breakthrough".

[70] Sunflowers president Adi Boiko remarked: "When we wanted to distribute Anno 1602 internationally, we encountered enormous prejudices that a game from Germany couldn't be anything special".

[10][11] Der Spiegel's Frank Patalong argued that games like Anno 1602 were a "specifically German phenomenon: nowhere else in the world are [these] simulations as successful as here at home".

[74] Boiko noted that it was "very difficult for us to find a good distributor" in the United States, which led to Anno 1602's delayed release and lack of marketing there.