Battlezone (1980 video game)
| Battlezone | |
|---|---|
Arcade poster | |
| Developer(s) | Atari |
| Publisher(s) | |
| Designer(s) |
|
| Programmer(s) | Ed Rotberg Morgan Hoff |
| Composer(s) | Jed Margolin |
| Platform(s) | Arcade, Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Atari 2600, Atari ST, Commodore 64, IBM PC, VIC-20, ZX Spectrum |
| Release | Arcade Atari 2600 C64, VIC-20
1987 |
| Genre(s) | Vehicular combat First-person shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Battlezone is a 1980 first-person shooter tank combat video game developed and published by Atari for arcades. The player controls a tank which is attacked by other tanks and missiles. Using a small radar scanner along with the terrain window, the player can locate enemies and obstacles around them in the barren landscape. Its innovative use of 3D graphics made it a huge hit, with approximately 15,000 cabinets sold.
With its use of three-dimensional vector graphics, the game is considered to be the first true 3D arcade game that has a first-person perspective, the "first big 3D success" in the video game industry, and the first successful first-person shooter video game in particular. This made it a milestone for first-person shooter games.
The game was primarily designed by Ed Rotberg, who was mainly inspired by Atari's top-down shooter game Tank (1974). Battlezone was distributed in Japan by Sega and Taito in 1981. The system was based on vector hardware designed by Wendi Allen which was introduced in Lunar Lander and saw success with Asteroids. The 3D hardware which drove the program saw use in future games, including Red Baron, released in 1981. It is considered to be one of the greatest video games of all time.