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Battlezone is an arcade game from Atari released in 1980. It displays a wireframe view (using vector graphics rather than raster graphics) on a horizontal black and white CRT (with green color overlay). Due to its novel gameplay and look, this game was very popular for many years. It holds a remarkable place in the history of computer and video games, by being the first 3D (and first-person 3d) arcade game.
Development
The vector technique is similar to the visuals of games such as Asteroids. The game was designed by Ed Rotberg, who designed many games for Atari, Atari Games, and Sente.
A version called The Bradley Trainer (also known as Army Battlezone or Military Battlezone) was also designed for use by the US army as targeting training for gunners on the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Only two of them were produced, one was delivered to the army and is presumed lost; the other is in a private collection. The gunner yoke was based on the Bradley Fighting Vehicle control and was later re-used in the popular Star Wars game. The Bradley Trainer differs dramatically from the original Battlezone as it features helicopters, missiles, machine guns and the actual tank does not move, the guns simply rotate. Apparently some developers within Atari refused to work on the project because of its association with the Army.
Also one cocktail version of Battlezone was developed as a prototype. This is also in a private collection.
Battlezone is widely considered the first true Virtual Reality game and The Bradley Trainer the first VR training device used by the US army.
Gameplay
The game was set on a plain with a mountainous horizon, distant crescent moon, and various geometric solids (in vector outline) like pyramids and blocks. The player viewed the screen, which included an overhead radar view to find and destroy the rather slow tanks, or the faster moving supertanks. Saucer-shaped UFOs would occasionally appear for a bonus opportunity. The saucers differed from the tanks in that they did not fire upon the player, and would not appear on radar. The player could hide behind the solids or maneuver in rapid turns once fired on to buy time with which to fire himself. Three hits by an enemy tank ended the game. Common play in the US could run from 25 cents to a dollar per game, depending on machine setting.
Cabinet
The game cabinet was a standard vertical shape with a novel "periscope" viewfinder which the player used to view the game. The game action could also be viewed from the sides of the viewfinder for spectators to watch. A later, less common version of the cabinet removed the periscope to improve visibility to non-players and improve the ergonomics for players who could not reach the periscope; hygienic concerns with the periscope, against which users pressed their faces, may have played a role in its removal.
A smaller version of the cabinet (known as a "caberet cabinet") also existed with the screen angled upwards, and no periscope. A cocktail table version was tested as a prototype but not produced; it lacked the color overlays as the display would have to flip for opposing players.
The controls consisted of two joysticks, each with forward or reverse to move and turn. One joystick contained a button used to fire projectiles at enemy targets.
Legacy
A clone (author unknown) of the game for DOS called "bzone.exe" circulated through the BBS community in the 1980s.
Throughout the 1980s, Battlezone was ported to several home computer systems, including DOS, the Apple II, Atari 2600, Atari ST, the Commodore 64, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the Atari XEGS and Atari Lynx (within that version is a hidden game with filled polygons). It was included in Microsoft Arcade in the 1990s; although very similar to the original arcade game, it was newly written, not a port of the original game's code.
A Battlezone clone named Stellar 7 was released on the Commodore 64 in the 1980s. It was ported to Apple II, DOS and Amiga. Its sequel, Nova 9, was later released on the Amiga and DOS by Sierra Online.
The 1991 Macintosh tank game Spectre and its sequels such as Spectre VR owed much to Battlezone for their gameplay and appearance.
There was a battlezone-derived game on SGI graphics workstations in the early nineties called "BZ" *, which added network play. BZ also had guided missiles, where the player would fly the missile after launch, returning to the tank on impact.
Activision, the video game publishing giant, released a game for Microsoft Windows inspired by and named Battlezone in 1998. Aside from the name, however, the game bears little resemblance to the original arcade game.
The game Tank Hunter on Pogo.com is almost an exact replica of Battlezone, complete with imitation vector graphics. The open source game BZFlag (BattleZone capture Flag) is available on SourceForge, and provides network play and full 3D graphics instead of vector graphics.
There was a bug in some machines which caused very high phony scores into the seven digits to be posted (after a player would enter his initials). Good players could actually reach this level after an hour or two of play.
There was a persistent rumor that, in the original game, if you kept driving in the same direction for at least an hour (without dying of course), you would eventually reach the mountains and see a "tank factory" pumping out enemy tanks. This rumor is almost certainly false.
Trivia
The music heard in the high score initials prompt is from Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture.
See also
- Battlezone, a 3D remake from 1998 which changed the game from an arcade game to a more complicated tank piloting strategy game.
- Combat Commander, another sequel to Battlezone released by Pandemic Studios in 1999.
- Red Baron (arcade game), a pseudo-sequel to Battlezone released by Atari in 1980, which utilizes the same Battlezone hardware.
- Battlezone is also the name of a band associated with Rock Against Communism.
External links
- Defunct Games: Battlezone Review (Atari Lynx)
- The KLOV entry on Battlezone
- A history of the game
- The Great Game Database entry on Battlezone
- Arcade Games – this article on arcade games names Battlezone as "the first truly interactive 3-D environment"
- Category at ODP
- MobyGame's entry for Battlezone
- Bradley Trainer
Clones
- Pogo's Tank Hunter (requires Java)
- BZFlag * (requires a 3D card)
- Battlezone - 32 hour Java vector version
Arcade games | Atari 2600 games | Atari 8-bit family games | Atari ST games | Atari Lynx games | Commodore 64 games | DOS games | Apple II games | ZX Spectrum games | 1983 computer and video games | 1980 arcade games | Atari arcade games | Vector arcade games | Two Joysticks, no buttons
"Battlezone"