Rommel's Revenge
Description
Rommel's Revenge is a variant of the arcade game Battlezone. Like the original game it is a first person game with wireframe graphics where the player controls a tank that has to shoot down other tanks without getting hit by their fire. The game takes places on a plain with mountains in the distance and various geometric solids (such as pyramids and cubes) acting as obstacles. Movement is limited to moving forward and reverse and rotating left and right. The game goes on until the player has lost all lives. A radar helps the player finding the location of the enemies.
Some additional features exist in later versions of the game. The Dragon/CoCo version has some additional enemies such as saucers and anti-tank missiles. The Amstrad version (retitled Tank Busters) makes further changes and uses the graphics engine from Dark Star. The player here has two weapons, a regular cannon and anti tank missiles as well as a shield that can absorb some hits before the tank is destroyed. There is however only one life. The anti tank missiles can be steered manually by the player and it is possible to turn on a missile eye's perspective.
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Credits (ZX Spectrum version)
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Reviews
Critics
Average score: 74% (based on 6 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 2 ratings with 1 reviews)
Atmopsheric Battlezone clone, wonderfully realized.
The Good
If ever a game was ideal for the PAL versions of the Dragon/Tandy CoCo computers this was it. As a 3D wire frame game, the black green palette of PMODE 4 is perfect, yielding an atmospheric stylized future landscape. the sound is minimal, but highly atmospheric. The most important thing is that the game's pace is perfect- brief moments of inaction whilst you scurry about looking for enemy ships work well, and the radar function is genuinely useful, unlike some clones where one look at the radar and you are toast. The advance of the enemy machines is at exactly the correct tempo for anyone familiar with the various Battlezone original. The only comparable game to this on the 6809 machines was ROMMEL 3D, by Microdeal, which looked as good, and was a more complex take, but got the pace wrong, being simply too fast.
The Bad
It is genuinely hard to find fault with this game, unless you actually count the fact that sometimes you don't get much chance as the enemy tanks have a habit of blowing you up before you have seen them. But then again, that is Battlezone all over. I guess they could have increased the type and number of enemy craft, but really sometimes simplicity is better.
The Bottom Line
Battlezone, in green and black.
Dragon 32/64 · by drmarkb (105) · 2020
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Game added by Kabushi.
Game added March 24, 2016. Last modified October 11, 2023.