{"id":3409,"date":"2016-02-08T13:45:35","date_gmt":"2016-02-08T13:45:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/retrovideogamesystems.com\/?p=3409"},"modified":"2020-08-28T16:29:53","modified_gmt":"2020-08-28T15:29:53","slug":"battlezone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/retrovideogamesystems.com\/battlezone\/","title":{"rendered":"A comprehensive guide to Battlezone."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Released by Atari back in November 1980 and created by Ed Rotberg, Battlezone was a first person shooter that put you in the driving seat of a tank where you could roam the landscape to seek out and destroy other tanks.<\/p>\n

Remembering the game as a teenager, it was awkward to play and I frequently kept getting blown up but this is one game I often played at my local arcade and took quite a lot of cash off me.<\/p>\n

Battlezone was one of the first three dimentional games.  It was similar to Asteroids in the respect that it used vector graphics rather than the conventional raster graphics.<\/p>\n

Using only two colours, green vector lines on a black back ground tied in with great sound effects, this gave the game a somewhat realistic feeling of actually batteling in a tank at night time.<\/p>\n

Battlezone was distibuted to the acrades in upright cabinets like many of the arcade games of the time, but for this game the cabinets were altered to incorporated a type of periscope in the middle but set back from the screen. This gave the player an extra dimension to the game but still allowed spectators to view the gameplay from the sides.<\/p>\n

In later versions the periscope was removed from the cabinet and a type of cross-hair was intergrated into the programming to feature on the screen, this made for more accurate shooting and allowed a wider audience of people to play the game such as youngsters who was not tall enough to reach the periscope.<\/p>\n

\"battlezone<\/a>Battlezone also boasted two controllers, this feature gave you a more realistic feeling of driving a tank.  These came in the form of a left and right hand controller that intern controlled the tracks on each side of the tank.<\/p>\n

If you push the left control forward and you would turn right, right forward and you turn left, push left forward and right back and you turn right on the spot, and vice versa.  Push both controls forward and you go forward, and both controls back for reverse.<\/p>\n

In game the player is placed on what appears to be a fairly barron planet surrounded by a mountainous landscape, erupting volcano’s and a cresent shaped moon in the distance, up close you have objects such as Blocks and Pyramid type shapes that you can move around.<\/p>\n

To the top of the screen is your radar, this is used to seek and destroy various enemies.  These range from slow moving tanks and faster faster moving supertanks.  What isn’t shown by the radar are guided missiles and U.F.O’s, these can be shot down for extra points.<\/p>\n

A great tip is to use the Blocks and Pyramids as they cannot be destroyed and are an ideal place to hide behind.  If your lucky and you can get behind a block with no tanks on radar, sometimes the next tank will appear directly infront of you.<\/p>\n

It will home in whilst firing then it will ram the block or pyramid.  When it realises it cannot destroy you it will either turn left or right to try and get at you, this is a perfect time to simply reverse back turn left or right to get him in your sights and destroy him.<\/p>\n