Nintendo games I miss playing most #2: Battle City
Here’s a Nintendo Family Computer (Famicom) or Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) game, aside from Super Mario Brothers and Adventure Island, that I enjoy thoroughly. It’s called Battle City, and for the generation that remembers Maze War as the only shooter game, making tanks move around mazes and blasting enemy tanks is the bomb.
Although Battle City, which was produced and published in 1985 by Namco, falls under the category of shooters, it’s very different from the usual shoot-’em-ups of its generation since you play the role of a tank.
Gameplay is pretty simple yet exciting. Battle City has 35 levels. Each level or map, 13 blocks wide and 13 blocks high, contains different types of elements—obstacles if you will—including brick walls, steel walls, bushes, ice fields and pools of water.
The game, of course, isn’t complete with enemies, which also come in the form of tanks. The objective is to destroy all enemy tanks on each level without losing all your lives or your base, which appears as a bird encased in a brick wall.
Of course, Battle City isn’t complete without power-ups for your tank. These power-ups come in different forms. Here’s a quick rundown:
Tank Gives an extra life
Star Improves the player’s tank
Bomb Destroys all visible enemy tanks
Clock Freezes all enemy tanks for a period of time
Shovel Adds steel walls around the player’s base for a period of time
Shield Makes the player’s tank invulnerable for a period of time
What made Battle City more interesting was its two player feature. Yes, in Battle City Player 1 and Player 2 can play simultaneously, unlike other games that had the two player option but made you play in turns. The two player mode is basically cooperative with both players tasked to defend the base. Players can’t destroy each other, though; hitting the other player’s tank will only freeze it, much like the Clock power-up.
Here’s a bit of trivia about Battle City, courtesy of wikipedia:
1. Battle City was one of the first NES games that allowed players access to an edit mode where they could create custom levels.
2. These custom levels can be uased as a maze.
3. There are two hacked versions of the game: Tank 1990 by “YS,” a version that features new power-ups (and allows enemy tanks to get them), lets the player choose the start level, and changes enemy tank properties; and Future Tank, a graphic hack.
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POSTED IN: Arcade Games, Blowing stuff up, NES, Nintendo, Re:Retro, Strategy
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