Classic of the Month - BattleZone

Manufacturer:	Atari
Genre:	Shoot 'em up/vector graphics
Board:	M6502 based board
Year:	1980

In the late 70s and early 80s, Atari released a lot of vector graphics games, including Asteroids, Lunar Lander, Tempest, Space Duel, Centipede, Millipede, Gravitar, Missile Command, Black Window, Red Baron, Star Wars and this month's classic, Battlezone.  This is as pure a game as you can get.  You take the controls of a lone tank, battling wave after wave of other tanks on a stark, vector wasteland.  You trundled along, waiting for the next enemy tank to appear on your radar, hoping all the time that you spot them, before they spot you.  If you were off target when you fired, there was a moment of panic while you waited for your canon to reload before the enemy got a shot in.  If they fired off a direct hit, the chances were you wouldn't get out of the way before it cracked the screen and took a life.  For an arcade game, the pace was slow and deliberate (although not as slow as Lunar Lander), but that only added to the tension.  And it was a level playing field, with never more than one enemy and never anything with more firepower or armour than you, so it wasn't so much cat and mouse as spy vs spy.

Graphics and sound in video games has come along way in the past 40 years, but their ability to capture our imagination and provide an immerse experience has always been there.  I've been playing a lot of The Elder Scroll V: Skyrim, which is a wonderful, vast, rich world, full of interesting characters and impressive scenery; it's easy to see why people get lost in such a world.  It's also easy to say that in comparison Battlezone is primitive, linear and rather dull little game.  How could a load of green lines on a screen ever be immersive, but in its day Battlezone was just that.  And somehow, it still holds up today, a fact that was proved to me when my 5 year-old boy started playing the Xbox Live Arcade version and (crucially) came back for another go a few days later.

There are actually two versions of Battlezone on the Xbox 360, the aforementioned XBLA port and the Game Room emulated version.  Purists will want to check out the Game Room version, available in game pack 3.  As with any of Game Room's more playable titles, Battlezone benefits hugely from the service's challenge mode, where you can set your online friends tailor made challenges, such as shoot 10 tanks without missing a shot or dying.  If however, you would like to play it with a few modern trappings, check out the "Evolved Mode" of the Xbox Live Arcade version.  It maintains the same aesthetics, but bumps up the resolution, adds some subtle shading and tops it all off with some nice particle effects, none of which have spoilt the game's eerie atmosphere.  What's particularly nice about the Live Arcade version is as well as provide classic and evolved versions of the game, you can set the controls so each the left analogue stick controls the left tracks and the right analogue stick control the right tracks, with the triggers for firing, just like the arcade.

MTW