Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
13 Dish: Making the
Game Tank Battle
In 1974, Kee Games, a subsidiary of Atari, Inc., released an arcade game called Tank ! It was
a two-player game where players had to drive around a maze and destroy the other player's
tank. Although its graphics were simplistic black and white from a fixed top-down view-
point, the game was extremely advanced for the time. Its control system was outstanding;
it used two single-axis (up and down) joysticks to steer each vehicle as if each stick were
controlling an individual track on each side of the tank.
Tank ! required two players to play; there was no artificial intelligence. Perhaps this
was because of the complexity of AI programming and the technological limitations of
the time, or perhaps it was a design decision; it had no apparent impact on its success, and
the game was a huge hit. It would be quite a while before a single-player tank game would
make it into the arcades.
I personally recall the privilege of playing a tank game in an arcade in the late 1970s;
I played a multiplayer top-down tank game, but it was so long ago now that I can't be sure
it was the original Tank ! When I see screenshots, it looks very familiar, at least. Despite
brushing with it at the arcades, the strongest memories of playing Tank ! come from its later
incarnation as a game for the Atari 2600 game console. Variations on Tank ! came on a game
cartridge called Combat , released in 1977, which included a collection of 27 variations on
five game types, all tied together by the main theme in the title. Most of my time on the
Atari 2600 was spent battling against my brother or my cousin, each of us trying to blast
each other out of the games or beat each other's high scores. Tank ! was a huge hit with us,
and I'm sure that Combat would have ended up being the most worn cartridge we owned.
Search WWH ::




Custom Search