Artillery Games On The PC
With the increased presence of IBM-compatible PCs came the arrival of artillery games to the platform. In 1990, Tank Wars was released by Kenny Morse and published by Microforum for MS-DOS-based PCs. Tank Wars introduced the concept of buying weapons and multiple AI computer-player tanks to the artillery game.
In 1991, one artillery style game in particular got widespread attention when Gorillas was distributed as part of QBasic with MS-DOS 5.0. That year also saw the release of the first version of Scorched Earth by Wendell Hicken. Scorched Earth was a popular shareware game for MS-DOS in which tanks do turn-based battle in two-dimensional terrain, with each player adjusting the angle and power of his or her tank turret before each shot. Scorched Earth, with numerous weapon types and power-ups, is considered the modern archetype of its format, on which the popular games Worms, Atomic Cannon, Hogs of War, SpaceTanks GunBound and Pocket Tanks are based. Scorched Earth incorporates many of the features of previous graphical artillery games (including sarcastic comments by each player's tank before firing) while expanding the options available to each player in regard to the choice of weapons available, the ability to use shields, parachutes, and ability to move the player's tank (with the purchase of fuel tanks). The game is highly configurable and utilizes a simple mouse-driven graphical user interface.
Read more about this topic: Artillery Game
Famous quotes containing the words artillery and/or games:
“We now demand the light artillery of the intellect; we need the curt, the condensed, the pointed, the readily diffused—in place of the verbose, the detailed, the voluminous, the inaccessible. On the other hand, the lightness of the artillery should not degenerate into pop-gunnery—by which term we may designate the character of the greater portion of the newspaper press—their sole legitimate object being the discussion of ephemeral matters in an ephemeral manner.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
“Intelligence and war are games, perhaps the only meaningful games left. If any player becomes too proficient, the game is threatened with termination.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)