Battle City
Battle City. Probably not much history, I just like playing it. Probably just someone thought up a space game but changed the spaceships to tanks.
Gameplay
Pretty simple. You are a tank. You kill other tanks. It is a fairly easy game until you get to the high levels, then it is hard to see enemies. Typical old school point game, kill a tank, receive points. You also get extra lives, and tank power ups! Yes, I have gotten the most powered up tank, it is a good tank. However, once you get into this game, you'll find it fun to take your mind off your problems by making them into enemy tanks and...KABOOM!
Battle City, for better and for worse, runs in my blood. I first saw my grandpa and my uncle playing it together when I was five years old and was unimpressed. It was one of forty-one other games included on a bootleg 42-in-1 cartridge that my older cousin brought back from Thailand, and at the time, I preferred the more colorful, goofier games, like Chack ‘N Pop and Nuts and Milk (you can’t make these titles up). As I grew up and watched my relatives play Battle City repeatedly, I appreciated it for the unique title that it was. It never became my favorite, but I couldn’t deny its originality. For whatever reason, though, almost every single one of my brood of cousins lives and breathes Battle City when they’re at my grandmother’s house. It’s not like there aren’t other Nintendo games either besides the 42-in-1, but I rarely see any of them pulled out. Battle City was, and remains, my extended family’s go-to game, and not just my family’s. Any friend of mine that saw it instantly wanted to try it, and usually, fell in love with it. It makes me think that Nintendo/Namco really blew an opportunity for some coin by not releasing Battle City in the States.
Battle City is a top-down single-screen vehicular combat game that's functionally similar to Atari's Combat. It is the sequel to Namco's earlier tank combat game, Tank Battalion, and would be followed by 1991's Tank Force. It became one of Namco's earliest original Famicom (NES) games, and was later adapted for the Game Boy and for the Arcade as one of the "Vs." series.
The gameplay is simple: you are a yellow or green tank, and your goal is to defend your eagle base from a swarm of about twenty baddies. Each level has unique terrain, and actually reminds me a little of a simpler, more action-oriented Advance Wars. The levels are made up of mostly brick, with varying degrees of camouflaging grass, white brick/concrete, ice, or water. Your enemies’ tanks are colored white, but there are three red tanks that pop out during each stage. Hit these red tanks once and an item will appear randomly on the field. This item can be anything from a star, which enables you to shoot faster (three stars allows you to destroy the otherwise impenetrable white bricks), or a grenade to destroy all the enemies on screen, or a stopwatch that temporarily stops the enemies, etc. The levels get hard fast, and if you don’t get a steady supply of stars and lives, prepare to be destroyed quickly. This game isn’t nearly as fun without a second person either. When you get tired of shooting tanks through 35 levels of mayhem (the levels repeat with increased difficulty once you get to stage 36), there is a level editor. Sadly, you can’t save your levels, but it’s still a groundbreaking feature for such an old NES game.
Considering it's for the Game Boy, not much graphics. The creators go into detail, with good eyesight you can pick out individual bricks and cracks. The sound is crisp, fairly clear, and loud due to the original Game Boy being the loudest sounding handheld ever. There isn't much music, but you hear a motor, you hear explosions, a sound when you pick up a power up/extra life, and your shots. Enemy shots would have made the game easier, maybe too easy in my opinion. The motor sound and bricks shows the immense amount of work the creators put into graphics. Back in that time, those graphics were probably close to next-generation. This was a game made in the days of 2-dimensional graphics and it might sometimes look like the graphics pop out at you, you can sort of see the tank's side when you move left or right. Also there are many different sounds, amazing for a tiny cart game, especially with mine which has 39 games on one cart.
Graphics: The game looks pretty descent. There isn't much to be said about the graphics. The explosions are vibrant and satisfying.
Sound and Music: The game performs very well on the audio department. The music before each level gets players hyped-up for a nice tank battle and the sound effects are awesome. I've never felt so happy about shooting a tank. Plus, when the player gets a high score the screen starts flashing and the music makes you feel like winning a gold medal.
Multiplayer: This is where the game truly exceeds. Two players can play at the same time and this adds more strategy to the game. One player can guard the base while the other picks off individual enemies, both can try to overwhelm the enemy and so on. It has some competitive elements as well since the player with the most kills after each level gets 1000 extra points. Every time I hold gaming parties at my home Battle City is a must-play.
Play Time/Replayability
Go for the high score! Be a killing machine! This game sucks you in like an RPG. It has near infinite replay value as you keep striving for the next level, and the next, and the next. You will probably only bash this game for getting you detention and your game boy taken away. It is a shooting game, however, and after a while of playing it DOES get boring, that is until the next day!
The technical aspects of the game are pretty standard for an early Famicom game, with the exception of the fantastic sound effects. I’m always surprised by how awesome the tanks sound simply rumbling around. Shots being fired, tanks exploding, getting power-ups – the sound design, along with the carefully crafted battlefields, make Battle City one-of-a-kind.
While Battle City is not my favorite NES game like it is for my crazy, passionate younger cousins, the game is such a standout on the NES library. There’s really nothing like it (at least that was released in the States) and for that reason alone, it’s worth obtaining “somehow.”
Battle City takes place from a top-down view and both the AI and player must navigate through the environment to destroy their targets. The game offers semi-destructible environments - the brick walls that make up most of the levels can be destroyed completely allowing the player's tank to cut a path to its target. Other non-destructible obstacles such as water (cannot be crossed) and foliage (hiding both the player's and enemy tanks from view) make up the rest of the environment.
This game can be played 2-player, cooperatively.
Enemies come in waves, and can range from enemy tanks that can be destroyed in one shot to armored behemoths that take more than several shots to destroy. The game has no boss battles.
The player can completes a level by destroying all 20 enemy tanks on the level or loses the level if they run out of lives, or if an eagle statue (i.e. the base) at the bottom of the map is destroyed by the enemy.
To help defeat the enemy, several temporary power-ups can be picked up after destroying foes. These include invincibility for the player's tank, invincibility for their statue or extra lives.
The game also offers a level creator. However, any levels created cannot be saved.
