The development staff consisted of two programmers, Joel Billings and John Lyons, who programmed the game in BASIC.

The game is a simulation of the German battleship Bismarck's last battle in the Atlantic Ocean during World War II.

[4][6] The game takes place on a map of the North Atlantic Ocean on which letters from the English alphabet represent military units and facilities (airfields and ports).

Turns take the form of phases, and players alternate inputting orders to maneuver their respective units.

This experience led him to believe that computers could handle war games and remove tedious paperwork from gameplay.

[1][10] Billings suggested starting a software company with him, but the programmer was not interested in war games, stating that they were too difficult and complicated to be popular.

[10] Billings posted flyers at hobby shops in the Santa Clara, California area to attract war-game enthusiasts with a background in programming.

Two months into development, Billings met with Trip Hawkins, then a marketing manager at Apple Computer, via a venture capitalist, who convinced Billings to develop the game for the Apple II;[2][10] he commented that the computer's capacity for color graphics made it the best platform for strategy games.

Billings and Lyons then converted their existing code to work on the Apple II and used a graphics software package to generate the game's map.

After Computer Bismarck was finished in January 1980, he searched for a graphic designer to handle the game's packaging.

[1][2] In February 1980, he distributed 30,000 flyers to Apple II owners, and displayed the game at the Applefest exposition a month later.

[1] SSI purchased a full-page advertisement for the Apple II version in the March 1980 issue of BYTE magazine, which mentioned the ability to save a game in progress as well as play against the computer or another person.

Neil Shapiro of Popular Mechanics that year praised the game's detail and ability to recreate the complex maneuvering involved in the real battle.

[7] Reviewing Computer Bismarck in The Space Gamer magazine, Joseph T. Suchar called the game "superb" and stated that "it has so many strategic options for both sides that it is unlikely to be optimized.

Perla attributes SSI's success to the release of its early wargames, specifically citing Computer Bismarck.

[14] One of SSI's later games, Pursuit of the Graf Spee, uses an altered version of Computer Bismarck's core system.