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Robby Boey
Belgium
Niel
Antwerp
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Next to being a Commodore geek (see my blog at www.mos6502.com), I’m also a bit of a board game geek (if interested, you can check out my profile and games over at boardgamegeek.com).
Now, what would be really cool would be a combination of both, right? Well, hey presto, here comes “TankAttack”, a game adapted (not created, as the game has a much older history – see the note at the bottom) by CDS in 1988 that does just that.
So, what’s it about and what is it? Basically it is a “board game meets computer” type game, in which you play the board game in pretty much the same fashion as most other board games, i.e. with family and friends sitting round the table, controlling the playing pieces on the board, but the variable elements, such as the rolling of the dice, are controlled by the computer.
I remember another variant on this type of setup, the “board game meets VCR/DVD” games like “Atmosfear”, with a scary character on screen interrupting players and changing some setups of the game.
Now, TankAttack plays like your traditional strategy game, in which you control a fictitious country’s army (the nations being Armania, Kazaldis, Sarapan and Calderon) and have as sole objective the capture of your opponents’ HQ. You can play the game with 2, 3, 4 players, resulting in 1 vs. 2, 2 vs. 2 or free for all setups.
The computer determines each player’s amount of moves (i.e. like the rolling of a dice), but cleverly takes other factors into account as well, such as your army’s morale (i.e. the better your occupation force move onward, the higher the morale), weather conditions etc.
The computer also provides, before each round of play, a war bulleting, detailing weather conditions, insights into the troops morale (but as in real life, these reports could be bogus) and political news. By analyzing these reports, players can decide whether or not it is a good idea to engage their opponents, or rather regroup and rethink their strategies.
When player movement has been completed, depending on the positions of the units on the board, enemies can be engaged. Here the computer plays along again, as now you have to provide the attacking and defending forces stats (i.e. heavy tank vs. armored car) for the computer to calculate the outcome of the conflict. A nice animation, viewed through your general’s binoculars shows the battle.
The rounds roll by and battles ensue until finally, one player (or team) is victorious.
The game components themselves are of good quality, with nicely detailed playing pieces (tanks and armored cars) and the board itself shows a detailed terrain, with towns, rivers, forests, … that all play a role in the game (related to line of sight, movement through difficult terrain etc.)
TankAttack is a fun game, one that lovely unites my love for board games and Commodore!
Historical footnote: The original “TankAttack” dates back to 1977, when it was advertised as the first computer based tank game in the world. The primitive computer had, as it was stated, “counters, gates, an oscillator clock, programming and read out and execute functions. The ‘brain’ is made of three miniature TTL logic chips containing over 300 transistors, diodes, and many other components giving a vast computing capacity with a wide range of probabilities for conflict purposes.”
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