-      Battlezone

Much more fun than the Legend of Zelda game, that much will always be certain. Battlezone is a first-person shooter game where the player battles other tanks, whilst trying to stay alive in the process. Like the Legend of Zelda, Battlezone’s core mechanics are centred on keyboard interactions, but with zero mouse input. Arrow keys turn the screen from side to side, and spacebar fires your weapon. Crosshairs in the middle of the screen assist you with accurately destroying your targets.

Battlezone’s theme is war, futuristic war as seen in Activision’s adaptation of the game in 1998. It’s hard to tell what the setting of the original Battlezone is, because the entire game is made of vectorised line meshes in a single green colour, similar to what you might see on a submarine’s sonar. Both also share very different goals, the former simply killing all enemies before being killed, and the latter involving domination of recourse points as an added conflict on top.

I much preferred the 1998 readaptation because of the increased modes of battle and number of factors determining victory. But to be blunt, it was simply more fun. I don’t think I’ll ever feel gratification quite like shooting a tank pilot as he descends in his parachute after having his tank destroyed.