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Tank (Kee Games/Atari series) questions


Fort Apocalypse

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Questions and info related to the Tank series of games by Kee Games/Atari (dates of release listed here) :

 

I've looked around, and I haven't found much info on Tank III (by Kee Games, but in Atari's IP Catalog) other than a source indicating that it had a single-player mode and others indicating it was the first game to be a third in the series. Does anyone have any pictures or additional info on Tank III?

 

Tank 8 is mentioned in Atari's IP Catalog on the Tank page, but isn't listed in the IP. In the 2016 IP Catalog, there is a Tank 8 logo on the tank page that was removed in the 2019 version. Tank 8 is not listed in the list of games in either catalog. Is it correct to assume that Tank 8 is in their IP and just not listed?

 

Is the proper name "Tank!" or "Tank", for the first Tank game in the series? It's referred to as Tank! in some places and just Tank in others.

 

Some source(s) indicate Tank II introduced mines, but it looks like mines were in the original Tank (the first one). I'm assuming any sources claiming Tank 2 introduced mines are incorrect, right? According to this source, in Tank II "The playfield can be changed by grounding D9 pin 6 (on Right board). Randy From published other modifications in PlayMeter April 77 & November 77 (both early & late issues) which included play controlled projectiles, alternating playfields, invisible tanks & return to base after shot." BTW, I found a PDF containing the manual/schematics for Tank (in the first part) and Tank II (in the second part) here which I attached.

One source indicated that Tank basically saved Atari from bankruptcy in 1974. The Wikipedia page just indicates "Tank was a commercial success and is credited with buoying the finances of the newly merged Atari at a critical time for the company", which isn't going so far as saying Atari would've gone bankrupt. How close was Atari to bankruptcy before the Kee Games acquisition?

 

Was Kee Games effectively part of Atari before it was acquired legally? Because the International Arcade Museum indicated that "Tank was released by Kee Games and became so popular that distributors no longer demanded exclusivity, and Atari and Kee were free to publicly become the single entity that they always had been. Atari created Kee in order to form its own competition and to get around the exclusivity demanded by distributors at the time a legacy of Pinball."

 

tank.jpg

tank 8.jpg

tank 8 - gameplay.jpg

tank 2.jpg

ultra tank.jpg

tank.pdf

Edited by Fort Apocalypse
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On 6/27/2022 at 6:56 AM, Fort Apocalypse said:

Was Kee Games effectively part of Atari before it was acquired legally? Because the International Arcade Museum indicated that "Tank was released by Kee Games and became so popular that distributors no longer demanded exclusivity, and Atari and Kee were free to publicly become the single entity that they always had been. Atari created Kee in order to form its own competition and to get around the exclusivity demanded by distributors at the time a legacy of Pinball."

You've answered your own question! 😜

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I got a DM from a fellow member in the forums who chose not to be credited as it wasn't their info, but was fine with me posting it here:

 

Quote

 

https://forums.arcade-museum.com/threads/pending-kee-atari-tank-in-nj.486797/ This thread on KLOV shows the model/serial sticker on the back.  Note that it says "Atari Inc." :) Tank and Tank II use the exact same pcbs.  The only difference is the maze layout which can be changed on either one.  See this page for more info about it: https://www.ataricompendium.com/game_library/easter_eggs/arcade/arcadetank.html

Same lack of info regarding Tank III.  It's possible it was planned and even designed but never released, or perhaps eventually became Ultra Tank.

I heard the same story about Tank and Kee Games basically saving Atari.  Atari was in a financial hole with their development of Gran Trak and some other risky business decisions.  Joe Keenan showed a real business knack for management.  Nolan Bushnell recognized that, which is why he turned to him to take over the Atari side.  Even with all of their success, the company was still struggling to grow, which is why Bushnell sold the company in 1976 to Warner.

 

 

As stated, Tank III is really lacking information. I'm hoping that if someone working for Atari or an arcade owner/etc. will see this and clear things up. For example, at the very least if Tank III wasn't released in 1975 then someone should clear that up in various sources out there like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_(video_game)

 

Also, one thing that spurred me on to get interested in Tank is that, clearly, the 2600 was developed to run Tank (Combat) among other games, yet multiple times I've seen developers say incorrectly something similar to "2600 internals were built to run Pong and that's why it's so limited," a statement which is at least misleading. Per the Tank page in Wikipedia: "A dedicated console version of Tank II was announced in 1977 but cancelled later that year; the joysticks for the game, however, became the standard joystick controllers for the Atari 2600 (1977)."

 

I found some pics and info on the Atari Tank II dedicated console and Sears Tank dedicated console in this thread:

How many were made of each if any?

 

I know this gets into dedicated consoles which is a different forum area, but I'm curious about the existence and info about this as well as how the 2600 was influenced by the Tank series and dedicated console development.

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2 hours ago, Fort Apocalypse said:

How many were made of each if any?

From a DM from a fellow member in the forums:

 

Quote

The Tank II dedicated console was never released AFAIK.  You're correct in that the joysticks designed are similar to the early VCS joystick design.  Note the handle/shaft is different on the Tank II sticks.

Quote

Btw, there's a better photo of the Tank II dedicated system in this thread:

 

Quote

And here's a thread with an early photo of the VCS showing it with those Tank II joysticks:

 

 

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Here are some other scans of the Sears Tank console (their version of the Atari Tank II console) and of the Tank +Plus+ game for Sears Tele-games Video Arcade (their version of Atari 2600) that looks like Combat. Both scans are from: https://vglegacy.com/pop-culture/sears/ and partials are zoomed-in versions of those two.

 

Sears Tank (Atari Tank II) has what look like regular 2600 joystick controllers or something closer to them than those of the other mock-up of Atari Tank II, and the screenshot of the game looks different than Combat for the 2600, but looks mocked-up.

 

Tank +Plus+ (or Tank +, Tank+, Tank Plus, or whatever it was formally called) looks like Combat for the 2600, but looks mocked-up.

 

 

 

Sears-Tele-Games-Video-Arcade-Games-Advertisement-1977-Wish-Book.jpg

Sears-Tele-Games-Motocross-Sports-Tank-Advertisement-1977-Wish-Book.jpg

Sears Tank Plus Game.png

Sears Tank Console.png

Edited by Fort Apocalypse
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Quote

 

developers say incorrectly something similar to "2600 internals were built to run Pong and that's why it's so limited," a statement which is at least misleading.

I cannot understand how a statement like that could even be made, since Atari already released such a product before the VCS. Only a developer unfamiliar with the history of home video games who had never read any of the books on it (Phoenix: The Rise and Fall of Video games, The Ultimae History of Video Games (Kent), etc), nor listened to a Nolan Bushnell talk about the history of Atari, could make such a statement.

 

I have read it multiple times that the VCS was designed to be able to play multiple games at launch, and able to support many other games in the future.

 

Quote

Bushnell was convinced that Atari needed to outthink their competitors -- and could. The 1975 hit coin-ops Tank! and Jet Fighter were suggested as dedicated follow-ups to the Pong units, but Atari was tired of designing and selling dedicated hardware that cost $100,000 to developlxxxi with only two to three months of shelf-life before it became outdated. The company needed to design a platform that could sustain a life of two or three years, and at the same time support incremental game sales to an already established user-base. Months before the Fairchild Channel F appeared on store shelves, Atari was well on its way to creating a similar, yet much more flexible system.

This is clear from its launch titles that it was designed at a minimum to play Atari arcade hits Pong (paddles), and Tank (CX-40) at a minimum, but they were looking at providing other games in multiple categories

BlackJack

Surround

Basic Math

Video Olympics: Pong (Arc) and variations.

Combat: combination of Tank (Arc) and Jet Fighter (Arc)

Air-Sea Battle

Star Ship

Street Racer

Indy 500: Sprint 2 (Arc)

Edited by CapitanClassic
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4 hours ago, CapitanClassic said:

I have read it multiple times that the VCS was designed to be able to play multiple games at launch, and able to support many other games in the future.

 

This is clear from its launch titles that it was designed at a minimum to play Atari arcade hits Pong (paddles), and Tank (CX-40) at a minimum, but they were looking at providing other games in multiple categories

BlackJack

Surround

Basic Math

Video Olympics: Pong (Arc) and variations.

Combat: combination of Tank (Arc) and Jet Fighter (Arc)

Air-Sea Battle

Star Ship

Street Racer

Indy 500: Sprint 2 (Arc)

 

I find it amazing that the early 2600 carts actually contain different arcade titles from Atari at the time, like how Combat contains Tank & Video Olympics has the Pong variations like the dedicated game consoles that came before.

 

I didn't even knew the Star Ship cart also contained a version of Lunar Lander till I read the manual...

 

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Curiously arcade-museum site has this description:

 

Quote

The game has two large boards, one with a power supply regulator section. They are joined lengthwise by a series of ribbon wire.

This doesn't seem to have simply been taken from any of the other tank pages, but raised an eyebrow for me given that they don't have any members that claim to own one - this surely suggests someone has laid eyes on one or at least the boards, or simply made something up? Could someone have mistaken a T.N.K III board for a tank III board?

 

The claims of a single player mode is also curious, the same page suggests it could handle two players but not simultaneously, this does not seem to be a reasonable expectation. Either its a 2 player game with a 1 player feature, or its a 1 player game completely - would it even be logical to have a one player game purposely designed to have two sets of controllers, where only one set works at a time while the other waits for their go? It doesn't seem like a likely event. I've seen some interesting concepts of arcade games where players play on their own, but simultaneously, why would you play "together" but one at a time? And if it did happen to be that you could both play simultaneously against an AI (so that would be double the processing required at a time where a computer reacting to human responses in an arcade game wasn't known) it would surely have picked up some interest and steam even from a technical standpoint. It also doesn't make sense the idea that 'Kee Games' would have pushed this technology of an AI tank but nobody else would have been interested - 2 player or not.

 

AI tanks in these types of games was not even a thing years later on, the 1976 Desert Fox for the Channel F didn't have an AI tank, the 2600 Combat did not have an AI tank, although homebrew has made it possible, there was no equivalent thing at the time. Intellivision's Armor Battle didn't have an AI tank.

 

Edit:

Bit Corp made Phantom Tank for the 2600 in 1982 and then Tank Wars for Colecovision in 1983, but these appear to be "dumb" led reactions where they point in different directions and just continually shoot, with tight maze like behaviour. Later levels of Phantom Tank which are more open shows that there is no sensible logic in the way they move, they are simply following basic code to appear to be a challenge, they don't seem to be aiming for the player in any way at all. The closest similar concept to a moving tank aiming for a player is surely ghosts in pac man in 1980 but without the shooting.

Edited by Mikebloke
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On 8/19/2022 at 5:13 PM, Mikebloke said:

The claims of a single player mode is also curious, the same page suggests it could handle two players but not simultaneously, this does not seem to be a reasonable expectation.

I'm unsure about Tank III, but note that Atari's Ultra Tank (1978) had AI:

And it had two sets of controllers:

https://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=10261

 

 

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I found this great documentary on Combat (Tank Plus):

 

Here's my transcription of part of it related to the work on it:

Quote

Atari's effort, the Video Computer System, had its first proof of concept prototype design completed on paper in 1975 by engineers Steve Mayer and Ron Milner. And
already the idea of porting Atari subsidiary Kee Games' Tank arcade machine was in the front of the engineers' minds. The design included the idea of running what would become Combat on the eventual system, and the initial prototype used the arcade machine's dual-stick control setup to run a basic version of Tank as a proof-of-concept. A second pair of hardware designers, named Jay Miner and Joe Decuir, were charged with building out that prototype design and turning it into a commercial product with one basic edict: that the VCS should be able to run home versions of Tank and Pong.


Also I found an interview with Joe and Ron at: https://www.stayforever.de/atari-vcs-interviews-with-joseph-decuir-and-ron-milner/

 

Ron said about the VCS joystick that:

Quote

 

Stay Forever: The VCS was shipped with the first recognizable joystick in home gaming history. Who came up with that design? Instead of bundling the machine with two different controllers (joystick and paddles), couldn’t you have combined both into one device, as Fairchild did with the Channel F?

Ron: The joystick came straight from the Tank coin-up game. Too hard to mechanically integrate a pot.

 

 

Attached is a screenshot of 1m44s into the Atari Archive Ep. 1 YT video showing what looks to be an Atari Tank or VCS prototype (not sure which and I didn't see a credit for this in the video, so idk where it's from).

 

prototype.png

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On 8/17/2022 at 3:51 PM, MrMaddog said:

I didn't even knew the Star Ship cart also contained a version of Lunar Lander till I read the manual...

Well, it has a game called Lunar Lander, but it predates the arcade game and has nothing to do with it. 

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On 8/25/2022 at 1:50 AM, Fort Apocalypse said:

I'm unsure about Tank III, but note that Atari's Ultra Tank (1978) had AI:

And it had two sets of controllers:

https://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=10261

 

 

Thanks for the video! This looks like the earliest version of an AI in a tank game to date, its pretty good as well considering. The branching options looks pretty simple and easy to decode and seem reasonable at the time. Its difficult to see how anything even 2 years prior would have had something like this as there is no evidence of it elsewhere.

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