Tank (video game)
Tank (English for tanks ) is a coin-operated arcade game in the genre tank simulation. It was (an Atari - daughter) made on 5 November 1974 by Kee Games. It was the first game that used the ROM for storing the graphic data. The hardware consisted of discrete TTL chips and did not yet have a central processor.
Game play
The game is black and white and consists of a labyrinth of small, winding blocks.
The 2 players simultaneously control a tank and must ever hit the enemy. The game was very successful and has been ported to all major home computer.
Economic Importance
Atari produced under the name Combat a version for the game console VCS 2600, the implementation of even a technically almost identical game Jet included except tank. The Combat module was 2600 console for a while supplied with the VCS and was due to its great popularity their sales promoting USP.
Control
Each player has two 2-way joystick ( 1 axis ) and a fire button. A joystick was for the up / down movement, the other is responsible for the left / right motion. Usual 4-way or 8-way joystick for all directions were ( 8-way diagonally ) in other games. The Atari 2600 version of each player uses an 8- way joystick.
Successor
- Tank II ( 1974) ( with landmines as 'X' icon)
- Tank III (1975)
- Tank 8 (1976)
- Ultra Tank (1978 )
- Combat (1978, for Atari 2600)
- Battle City ( Namco )
The same hardware was also used by Shark Jaws (Atari, 1975), the first game, with animated characters.