Battlezone (1980 video game)
Battlezone is a first-person shooter tank combat game released for arcades in November 1980 by Atari, Inc. 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.
| Battlezone | |
|---|---|
Arcade poster | |
| Developer(s) | Atari, Inc. |
| 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
1987 |
| Genre(s) | Vehicular combat First-person shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
With its use of three-dimensional vector graphics, the game is considered to be the first true 3D arcade game with 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, making 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 Howard Delman which was introduced in Lunar Lander and saw success with Asteroids. The 3D hardware that drove the program saw use in following games, including Red Baron, released in 1981.