Robot Tank Vs Battlezone (In A Lifeboat)

[Whisper]

Man what a difference! I only have Robot Tank and I think that looks nice on PAL. Inferior to those screenshot of NTSC Battlezone though, that game looks great! I can't compare the games as I have never played Battlezone, I don't like using emulators for Atari.

[kisrael]

What's the difference then?

Way less colors which is very unusual for PAL conversions.

 

Hm, maybe someone could make a better PAL conversion.

That is odd.

 

What happens if you run the PAL version on a system expecting NTSC, do the colors get super ugly?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

What happens if you run the PAL version on a system expecting NTSC, do the colors get super ugly?

Only a little bit, why don't you try yourself (z26 and switch palettes)?

[liveinabin]

Holy crap! NTSC battlezone looks like that?! I've only ever played the PAL cartridge. Sod that then, Robot Tank it is

[kisrael]

Holy crap!  NTSC battlezone looks like that?!  I've only ever played the PAL cartridge.  Sod that then, Robot Tank it is

You mean, Robot Tank gets thrown over the side, or you don't like the extra detail the NTSC has?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

At least most of the colors could have been used easily.

battlezone__pal_color_hack_.zip

[liveinabin]

Holy crap!  NTSC battlezone looks like that?!  I've only ever played the PAL cartridge.  Sod that then, Robot Tank it is

You mean, Robot Tank gets thrown over the side, or you don't like the extra detail the NTSC has?

 

Robot tank stays in the boat and the PAL version of Battlezone gets tied to a 5200 and dropped in the sea.

[NE146]

Kind of off topic.. but I recently hacked around Robot Tank so I could actually see the game finished. Basically I gave myself infinite lives, and always started out the rounds with 11 enemy tanks destroyed and thus only needed to shoot one tank to get to the next level.

 

Anyway, has anyone seen the upper levels of Robot Tank? It's INSANELY difficult. It's almost impossible.. actually no, it IS impossible to avoid the split second shots that come your way unless you're already out of it's way. Even with my cheat it was hard to advance and only then out of pure luck by shooting wildly in the hope I'd kill the other tank first!

 

When the game ends by the way.. it just stops. And you got a row of tanks along the top.

 

Good games both. But I think at this point I'm burned out on Robot Tank and would take Battlezone... the original, the best

[Cootster]

I love the weirdness of gamers' tastes.  We all take one side or another and have reasons for doing so.  There must be something about Battlezone's style that gets me in a way that Robot Tank doesn't. I remember a similar debate over Starmaster-Star Raiders.  I'm one of the few in the Star Raiders camp.

 

We could play this with quite a few of Activision's games, they loved to do pretty conversions of other people's games.

 

Sticking with the 2600 cart versions:

Chopper Command or Defender?

Freeway or Frogger?

Frostbite or Q*Bert?

Decathlon or Track & Field?

 

I actually prefer Defender to Chopper Command, no one else seems to feel that way.

 

 

Defender is more complex than CC, plus they actually got the flame on the back of the ship in, plus I'm better at it . . .

 

Frogger owns Freeway, even the PB version. Why did they do it for the Supercharger instead of some other arcade game that wasn't done well already?

 

Frostbite and Q*Bert both rule, can't decide. . .

 

Track & Field is just barely better than Decathlon, even though I will never understand how either of them are playable with a CX-40 . . . Need the button controller that came with T&F.

[+Nathan Strum]

Not true, up to two enemies at the time.  C'mon, shooting that saucer isn't much of a challenge if you're not dodging tank shells at the same time.

 

I don't count the saucers as enemies, since they don't actually attack you. They serve as a distraction, nothing more. In the 2600 version, you have multiple attacks happening at the same time. Admittedly, it's a matter of semantics, but gameplay-wise it makes a huge difference. You never have two things trying to kill you in the arcade version.

 

If anything, the barriers in the arcade version are more of an "enemy" than the saucers, because they hamper manueverability.

 

Anyway, that's all beside the point. The best tank game for the 2600 is clearly Combat.

[Shannon]

Throw out my heavy sixer and keep the robotank and battlezone carts!!

 

[NovaXpress]

I don't count the saucers as enemies, since they don't actually attack you. They serve as a distraction, nothing more. In the 2600 version, you have multiple attacks happening at the same time.

 

And the same goes for the arcade version! Why not MAME it and see for yourself?

[+Nathan Strum]

And the same goes for the arcade version!  Why not MAME it and see for yourself?

 

I don't think I was being clear. When I mean "attacks" I'm referring to tanks and missiles only. The arcade game never sends more than one lethal enemy at a time. The 2600 version does. That makes for a totally different strategy.

 

If there is a version of the arcade game that sends more than one at a time, I'd love to see it. If there's an alternate ROMset floating around out there, please let me know.

 

I've been playing Battlezone since 1980, and would love to see another variation of it. It is, in fact, my favorite arcade game of all time. I'm not half-bad at it, either.

 

(And yes - I've played it in MacMAME. Quite a lot, in fact.)

[kisrael]

Not true, up to two enemies at the time.  C'mon, shooting that saucer isn't much of a challenge if you're not dodging tank shells at the same time.

I don't count the saucers as enemies, since they don't actually attack you. They serve as a distraction, nothing more. In the 2600 version, you have multiple attacks happening at the same time. Admittedly, it's a matter of semantics, but gameplay-wise it makes a huge difference. You never have two things trying to kill you in the arcade version.

Agreed. And I love when (2600) an enemy mothership will come charging in, only to run smack into a tank, causing both of them to get blow'd up. But manuevering to destroy one tank while trying to make sure you can still get out of the way of a shot from either of them...that really is the heart of 2600 Battlezone.

 

Anyway, that's all beside the point. The best tank game for the 2600 is clearly Combat.

Heh.

 

I'm a sucker for tank games. There's been a truly disturbing lack of them on the latest generation of consoles; N64 had the wonderful BattleTanx and its sequel, but all this generation had was the anemic Thundertanks which was just lacking in hard to describe ways. (Well, some of them were easy, like "no story mode" but the multiplayer just was off...I can't believe that game is why I got a PS2, thank goodness for GTA3...)