It was fun. Was a bit younger but played it like crazy too on my 286.
Rollers! Lava! It’s like the author started with a simple tank war game and then just threw in every weird little effect they could code as a creative weapon.
same, it was a step up from dopewars, but not quite leisure suit larry which one of our friends had
years later i defeated the high score of Stephen Meek and realized with horror Oregon Trail was intended to teach patience not just dysentery damn you MECC!!
Early 90s DOS games were certainly quite creative. I mentally draw a dividing line between approximately the start of the era when the first Soundblaster became a common thing to find in affordable home x86 PCs, and early CD-ROM based games were also available (1991-1992), and the December 1993 release of DOOM and everything that came after. Very interesting era in the time frame in between there.
Oh man, we played this in computer lab in high school to pass time after we were done with our assignments. I believe it was a java/flash version though (year 2000/2001)
Just played a round, think I found a bug - It was down to one other computer and myself. For some reason the power capped at 235, so neither of us could come close to hitting one another.
I brought it back to life at one point as a Java Swing app for my kids, but the server side of things was still wonky. I'm glad to see that it's alive again, I had a lot of fun with this in the early 2000s.
I played the hell out of the original DOS game during high school in 1992 (or thereabouts, it's been a while.)
It was fun. Was a bit younger but played it like crazy too on my 286.
Rollers! Lava! It’s like the author started with a simple tank war game and then just threw in every weird little effect they could code as a creative weapon.
There were all kinds of neat hacks.
same, it was a step up from dopewars, but not quite leisure suit larry which one of our friends had
years later i defeated the high score of Stephen Meek and realized with horror Oregon Trail was intended to teach patience not just dysentery damn you MECC!!
Same! I remember playing this during my Borland C++ for DOS class in school. Good times.
Early 90s DOS games were certainly quite creative. I mentally draw a dividing line between approximately the start of the era when the first Soundblaster became a common thing to find in affordable home x86 PCs, and early CD-ROM based games were also available (1991-1992), and the December 1993 release of DOOM and everything that came after. Very interesting era in the time frame in between there.
We played Tank Wars by Kenny Morse, it's from 1990 and preceded Scorched Earth:
https://archive.org/details/TankWars_274
More unhinged fun IMO
OMG. One of my favorite games. It was fun to explore all the weapons and utilities with my brother.
Oh man, we played this in computer lab in high school to pass time after we were done with our assignments. I believe it was a java/flash version though (year 2000/2001)
yup, it was a java applet. Stopped working when Java in the browser died.
Just played a round, think I found a bug - It was down to one other computer and myself. For some reason the power capped at 235, so neither of us could come close to hitting one another.
you probably got damage. If stuck like this, go to menu and select "mass kill"
Wow that’s a lot to unpack lol
I brought it back to life at one point as a Java Swing app for my kids, but the server side of things was still wonky. I'm glad to see that it's alive again, I had a lot of fun with this in the early 2000s.
for the 25th anniversary (approximately) I vibecoded what i wanted to do for years -- port of the original remake (yes) to JavaScript. Alive again.
Doing the lords work, as they say. Thank you for sharing.
I did not realize Pocket Tanks was a derivative work.
Haha, same
Tank games like this have a long heritage. Scorch is probably the pinnacle, but I played primitive versions of this all the way back on an Apple ][.
So is Scorched Earth, it's preceded (at least) by "Tank Wars" (aka BOMB.EXE) by Kenny Morse from 1990:
https://archive.org/details/TankWars_274
A related page:
Scorched Earth: The Mother of All Games
http://www.whicken.com/scorch/
(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32092060)
yeah, that's the original. It is better than this remake but no multiplayer.
Hoooooly hell I totally forgot about this. Talk about dredging up some memories. I don’t think I have thought about this game in literally 20 years.
LOL nostalgic