Tank Commander (1984)

Name:Tank Commander
Number:186
Year:1984
Publisher:Thorn EMI
Developer:Chris James
Genre:Top-Down Shooter
Difficulty:5/5
Time:30 minutes
Won:Not possible

The Hut on Chicken Legs rings out creepily on the emulated Atari's sound system. I don't know why Chris James decided this is what should begin the unimaginatively named Tank Commander, but it's one of the better intro tunes I've heard so far. It's not even a very good rendition, but something about it works well even in this poor situation.

Tank Commander is a somewhat typical top-down tank shooter. You move around slowly, especially turning, and everything dies in one hit. You, the enemy, buildings, trees, the mud huts the local villagers seem to be living in.

At the start of the game you're allowed to pick your usual number of players and skill settings, but missions are entirely randomized, ranging from destroy enemy tanks to destroy enemy bases and fuel dumps.

In theory, this is a solid concept, an open-ended mission based shooter? This is what the '90s were built off of. Randomized? Sure. Except that the gameplay doesn't quite handle that.

The tank moves slowly, you don't get a decent speed and turning is very slow, you have to wait to visibly turn and there are no in-between states, what you see is what you get. To make this worse, you start off behind your base, a very awkward place to start because you have to annoyingly move past it every time. The game also likes throwing obstacles that slow you down, because of course it does.

You die in one hit and you restart the mission every time you do so. In short, everything that this game can do to make itself annoying, it does. Every time I thought I was close to winning the game would tear me back to reality. Oh, hey, what are these dots? Oh, mines. Yay.

The two lines indicate where you are, which is about as intuitive as it sounds.

It turns out what I was missing was that I could turn the turret, by holding down the fire key. This allows one to move and return fire without putting one in a suicidal position. I understand why someone would like this back in the day, but even with this advantage, I feel incredibly put upon here.

Firstly, we have the way bullets work. Your tank is very advanced, because bullets stay perfectly level with you; that is, if you shoot left and move up, the bullets will stay perfectly left of you. Meanwhile, what you actually hit seems to be weirdly small.

Sometimes airplanes pop up for a moment. These make a beeline straight for you, shooting once and then flying off. You can dodge...if the game allows you to. Supposedly there's some button that summons your own airstrike, but it costs a ton of fuel and shells, and you have a limited supply of those. I felt like I recived a sign when I tried to use the airstrike option and it restarted.

I wasn't exactly finding much to enjoy in the mission objectives, by the time you've reached the last of whatever objective you had, you might have forgotten whatever it is you were supposed to be doing. I won...once, but that was on the lowest skill setting. It's hard, but doable. I could eventually win the hardest difficulty, but this game is ticking me off.

Weapons:
I kind of like how a shooter of this kind has a limited amount of ammo, but the way the gun works hinders that. 1/10

Enemies:
Stationary turrets and tanks with exploitable, yet just random enough to be dangerous AI. 2/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
A randomized field in which some objects dwell. Interesting enough for a game of this era, but not good today. 3/10

Player Agency:
You know the complaints a lot of people have about tank controls? How they're slow and imprecise? This is the game that actually applies to, with the added bonus of a bunch of awkwardly placed keys that are vital to your mission, placed next to the restart button. 2/10

Interactivity:
You can destroy some buildings, trees and minefields. 1/10

Atmosphere:
Misery. 0/10

Graphics:
This fits into that mold of Atari-era wargame/strategy game so well I'm not surprised that Atarimania includes this as one. 2/10

Story:
None.

Sound/Music:
The intro music is far more ominous than this game deserves. Otherwise it's your typical Atari war game. 2/10

That's 13, some good ideas buried under something that just ticked me off.

The good news seems to be that 1984 is shaping up to be a quick year. The bad news is that I don't seem to be playing much of anything. I don't remember how many games I started with, somewhere in the 90s, but my working list has it down to 68. In the meantime, I better get back to trying to play that Armored Trooper Votoms game, it's been hanging in the air for longer than it should.

Game 14: Submarine Commander

Name:Submarine Commander (Computer)
Number:14
Year:1982
Publisher:Thorn EMI
Developer:Dean Lock
Genre:Submarine Simulator
Difficulty:4/5
Time:~1 Hour

Submarine Commander wasn't my first choice for early examples of the FPS genre, but I couldn't find any copies of them for the Apple II and the one I could find for DOS wouldn't work without me fiddling around with it. Something I wasn't willing to do. That gives me the deep question of how to play an Atari 8-bit computer these days. It also follows that Submarine Commander's Apple II conversion is from 1983, making the year a lie. Software companies were apparently beating down the doors to release software for the now four years discontinued computer. This is in the old days when you couldn't just emulate old computers. Now you can pass the modern computer compatability over to the DOSBox team and they couldn't care less as long as you aren't doing your spreadsheets in it.

The game loads up with the sort of sound that makes me nostalgic for the PC Speaker. I'm not a fan of the ear-splitting sound AppleWin seems to be saddled with, whether or not that was present in the original system...I don't care. This is about playability in the modern era, if this is the only way to play it, its something that's going to have an effect on it.
I went through this game twice, once I did it very badly and yet somehow still didn't wreck my ship. Apparently generic German engineering is better than top of the line Soviet engineering. The second time, well...Unfortunately, Submarine Commander seems to actively resist playing it, you have to use the F & H keys to turn, the T & V keys to ascend and descend, and the number keys to speed. You have further menus in the form of Periscope, Map, and Sonar. The keys are the capitals.

I am offered the entire Mediterranean to terrorize. Speed is quite nice, I figure you could get across most of the map in under half an hour. The whole ship package is good for '82. I can see how HFRO improved upon it. So I move my way over to one of these convoys. There was one close by me this time. Two. One of them lands so I go after the other one. Turning is very fast in this game, or the game speed is very fast.

Now, admittedly, I did not play it as much as I should have. I gave up at this point. Enemies did not appear on my radar or on the periscope. I caught up to them, a sound played, they buzzed off. This could be because the guy who cracked it was terrible at his hobby, or because I was supposed to do something else. Either way, I don't really care. Its not like this game was suddenly going to turn fun just because I knocked off a few ships.

Weapons:
You get torpedoes. 0/10

Enemies:
Three kinds, I figure they're violent and non-violent kinds. 2/10

Non-Enemies:
Non-existent. 0/10

Levels:
Yet another submarine game that boasts about having potentially limitless encounters in the same sandbox. 0/10

Player Agency:
There is everything I ever expected in a submarine game...questionably so. This is really put off by the lack of a mouse. 3/10

Interactivity:
Doesn't apply here. 0/10

Atmosphere:
It was depressing and felt pointless, but I wouldn't call it a feeling the game tried to give. 0/10

Graphics:
Weeeell, it was good at the time. 1/10

Story:
I had to look it up to find out. I thought it was during the cold war at first. 0/10

Sound/Music:
Silence, followed by annoying blips and bloops when the action finally happens. 0/10

6 is the total. It was fun messing around with the submarine's options for a minute. Hopefully that'll be the worse game of all-time on this blog.
I'm not alone in thinking this game offers nothing now, as Computer Gaming World did a survey in 1993 saying exactly the same thing and giving it a 1 out of 5 stars.