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Comment by intrasight | Hacker News Reader

Spend countless hours and quarters on Battlezone in 1980-81. Stopped playing video game after that, saying "I'll start again when I see one as interesting". I'm still waiting.

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I had a lot of fun with Activision's Battlezone and especially Battlezone II. I hadn't realized they were inspired by an older game by Atari. They seem to differ in that Activision's games also include elements of the RTS and FPS genres (build your base, command your troops, walk and shoot first-person, get into battleships and drive them, etc.). They have a story mode too, if I remember right, and Battlezone II has a cheat to enter an editor for the level landscapes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlezone_(1998_video_game)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlezone_II:_Combat_Commande...

Great games! One of the pioneers of combining RTS and FPS, if not the first one?

We actually were almost at alpha with the first one before Activision decided to call it Battlezone. We were going to in "Next Generation" magazine and we realized we could be on the cover if we called it Battlezone. We also considered calling in River Raid but Battlezone fit better.

You worked right across the way from me, in Action/Sim I think. I am trying to remember where you were in relation to my desk (Civ, then I82 at that time).

I saw Zach Norman a couple years ago, he seemed well.

You've played no video games at all since '81? Or no battlezone-like games. Because there are PLENTY of far more interesting games since then. Battlezone is interesting and charming, to be sure, but certainly not the height of arcade gaming.

Have you tried VR Battlezone on PS5? I have it but haven't actually played it yet!

I have not - answer to both questions. Got busy with college, work, family. Im sure what will draw me back in will be VR. But I have no interest in FPS games. I await the next paradigm which VR will enable.

In college I wrote a multi-user version of Battlezone. Another student did a "flying through space" version.

What I learned doing that launched my software career.

would love to see that game if it can be played today! there is a MMO version of Joust out there which is glorious

LOL. I have a binder with the code printout somewhere. This was written in 1986 on CMUs "proprietary" hardware/software stack, which evolved into Mach, NeXTSTEP, and ultimately MacOS.

I feel like maybe you've missed a lot of what gaming has had to offer, like you've only ever seen FIFA and Call of Duty ads and nothing else about modern games. A stab in the dark at what you might find interesting: Try "Outer Wilds" by Mobius Digital on a friend's Switch or something.

Thanks. I googled it and watched some vids. That does look compelling.

One thing about the original arcade game is that once you got the rhythm and pattern of it, you could play forever. Was the only game I could just play until I got bored and quit.

Yeah, eventually the only challenge was when a fast tank would appear directly behind you and you had to maneuver to get it in front of you.

True. As a game, it wasn't very challenging. "Defender" was much more so. But it was, being 3D and vector, a peek into the future.

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