You are free to make 360 degrees movement but is quite complicated to understand whether you’re moving or not (mainly because even a real tank is very slow), so it can be hard to run away from a danger zone. The most difficult part is, clearly, avoid enemy bullets that are actually quite slow but extremely dangereous and deadly and almost impossible to dodge. In this you’ll be helped by a radar displayed on the right of what it looks like an HUD ante litteram indicating where are the other tanks. You maneuver a tank with a first person perspective on a large plain and you have to shoot at other tanks and xxx to gain some extra point. The gameplay of Battlezone is very basic and reflect that of the Arcade. You’re in the middle of a battlefield with your tank and you have to shoot other tanks and avoid their bullets. Even the effect of your tank being hit is remarkable, since the explosion is rendered like it was an error of the graphic card. The outcome was great anyway and Battlezone cas be remembered for the deatiled (backthen) visuals and even for the pseudo-3D effects such as the enlargement and shrinkage of the incoming tanks depending on the distance. Since it was impossible for the capabilities of the Atari 2600 to port an accurate version of the arcade Battlezone with vector graphics, Atari moved to a raster graphics. This is a bona fide grade since Battlezone has no splash screen.

Considering that we are talking of a 40 years old console, a game like this with pseudo-3D graphics, even if it’s a poor port of the original arcade game, is always impressive. And among all the games I’v found in the lot, Battlezone is probably one of the best.

This was actually the first item I’ve bought to enter my collection so I can say my collector like begun with this. The arcade game was a big hit and, baside the notable 2600 version, was ported also on Atari 5200, on Apple II, VIC-20, C64, ZX Spectrum, Atari XE/GS, Atari ST and MS-DOS.īattlezone is one of the games I purchased along with the Atari 2600 several months ago. Released first on Aracade and later ported on Atari 2600 it’s a descendant of Tank (1974) even if the direct son of the 70s game is Combat, always for Atari 2600. The tanks combat games are some of the earliest games developed and for sure Battlezone is one of the most important among them.

Battle tank atari 2600