Commonly considered the earliest progenitor of first-person shooters (FPS), Battlezone is a 3D tank game initially released in the arcades, and later converted officially to many systems. Earth has been invaded, and you and your tank lead the defensive effort. You drive around the battlefield from a first-person view, targeting and firing at tanks, planes and UFOs. You have a radar to help you see where the enemies are in direction and distance. Objects can be used as strategic cover. Controls simulate the tracks of a tank realistically, so the direction and speed settings are varied - combining forward right and backward left movements (as you can on keyboard versions) sees you change direction more quickly.

[edit description | view history]

Part of the Following Group

Battlezone series

Merchant	Title
	Battlezone
	Battlezone
Please select your country: Not an American user?

User Reviews

Relive the first first-person shooter in a surprisingly faithful reproduction of the original arcade game.

Trixter

(8728)

[review game]

The Press Says

There are no rankings for this game.

[add ranking]

Forums

Topic	# Posts	Last Post
The arcade original	1	John F Aug 23, 2007

[new thread]

Trivia

Arcade version

Development of the original Battlezone coin-op was a team effort: Morgan Hoff was the project leader; Jed Margolin handled electrical engineering; Ed Rotberg programmed it; Roger Hector modelled all 3D objects as minimally as possible, and Howie Delman's vector-graphics generator was used.

References to the game

Battlezone units appear in the movies:

Tron (1982)
Joysticks (1983))
The Philadelphia Experiment (1984))
Running Scared (1986))

Volcano

Owen Rubin kept pestering Rotberg to make the volcano on the horizon active; Rotberg brushed him off, challenging Rubin to write the code for the volcano himself if he felt so strongly about it. The next morning, there it was sitting on his desk.