| Tank Plus (aka Combat) 1977, ATARI/Sears Roebuck & Co. |
 
Tank Plus - aka COMBAT - was released WITH the Atari Video Computer System CX-2600 in September 1977. It was the game that the VCS was originally intended to work with (as well as Pong), and was one of the games developed along side it, as well as the pack-in game with ATARI branded VCS units (Target Fun, aka. Air-Sea Battle was released with the Sears Telegames VideoArcade version(s) of the VCS). It was Developed/Programmed by Steve Mayer and Rob Milner, while refined by Larry Wagner, and playtested by Joe Decuir - all key figures in the development of the Atari VCS/2600.
Combat/Tank Plus, is a 2-player only military vehicle arcade game, featuring 27 variations including Tanks, Pong Tanks, Invisible Tanks, Ricochet Tanks, BiPlanes, Biplane vs. Bomber, and Jet Planes. Basically, you have about 2 minutes and 30 seconds to chase your human opponent's vehicle around a playfield while shooting at it for high score. Once time is up, the one with the higher score wins. Combat is the far more popular variant of this game, and is so common copies can be had still in 2024 for mere CENTS! Tank Plus is the Sears Branded version,w hich was not sold with the Sears TeleGames VideoArcade systems like you'd think, that goes to Target Fun, instead, it was sold separateley as Tank Plus. See, the thing was, Atari had already struck up a deal with Sears on their dedicated home Pong units in 1973 - the earliest Atari Pong units were SEARS TV Tennis or something like that, not ATARI Pong. This deal allowed Atari and Sears to work together until sometime in the early-mid 80's, including special versions of the VCS, and special Sears versions of their games, and even a few exclusives, such as Steeplechase. When Sears was to sell the VCS in their own store, they sold it under the "Sears TeleGames Video Arcade" label, and requested Atari provide "Target Fun" (Air-Sea Battle) as the pack-in instead. This game is considered a classic, though not highly favored by the modern gamer because it requires 2 players to enjoy it. There was to be a sequel in the early 80's, Combat II, but it was never released to the public until one of the Atari Flashback releases in the mid 2000s.My Experiences Combat really shows where the VCS came from. The Atari VCS was NOT intended to be this big, fancy, complex game playing home game system like it's kinda' grown into (especially in the indie dev scene). It was intended to be a alternative and/or "tide you over until you can go to the arcade" box. It was intended to play things like Tank, Pong, Sprint/Indy x00, and other arcade games from the period at home without shoving quarters into the machine. Early arcade games like Tank, Pong, and even Sprint - could be recreated using the VCS's original hardware perfectly, with some enhancements over the arcade games. But as Arcade games got more popular, and more advanced, it soon became more important to selectively develop Arcade ports and new original ideas on the console by removing elements that were less important to the "experience" of playing the game - a lost art in todays' world. But the part that I think MOST people fail to get about both the early VCS, and the 70's/early 80's, was that video games were not always this isolationist activity, and was not always just for kids either. The original Pong was put in Andy Cap's Tavern in California and it was said to almost be "Customary" for a woman to ask a man to play a game of Pong with him if he was interested - far opposite of how "gamers" are portrayed now (ie "Incels"). Christ, to only have been born a boomer and been able to hook up over a game of pong! Families would play Pong, their VCS, intellivision, or Colecovision at home TOGETHER! I remember as far back as being a baby my mom and two older sisters playing Super Breakout, Pac-Man, or Space Invaders together. I remember being guest at my sister's Jr/HIgh School Friends houses and seeing as many as like six or so people gathered around the Atari VCS and playing some multi-player game together. Such a different time. Arcades were full of people playing video games competitively, or cooperatively, together. It was a SOCIAL activity. I think the era of the Playstation and XBOX was really where the social aspect of gaming truly dissappeared and it became ripe for the jokes about "gooner incels" and the stereotypical acne clad, fat, male, sexless PC gamer screaming in a microphone at people across the world while spending his Corporate "allowance" on server space on the "cloud" somewhere. That makes these early releases a very interesting study to remember the humble roots to video games before the lamestream took it all over and basically turned it into a largely isolated male activity (when it could not be further from the truth). My super lamestream half-sister for example, it took a heavy amount of pursuasion to get her into playing Combat with me when I was 8, this was well into the NES's lifecycle. I had nobody to play this game with, which is why as a kid, I thought it sucked - the world had already changed. Video Games were this activity for children, adults wanted to read books, play with their Tarot Cards, and listen to Enya while they contemplated their magic crystals. Teenagers wanted to basically watch Waynes World, Benny and June, and find a quiet place to fuck. And most of my own generation found anything "Atari 2600" laughably primative by that point. So Combat was always sort of this omni-present game, even in my collecting years, that was there. It was great for testing if a 2600 worked or not, or adjusting the Chroma/Luma colors...but outside of that, not much use for it. Skip ahead, I'm 41, I've downsized my collection, every copy of Combat I've had long gone, and I'm married to someone who says the "tiny Atari Graphics" bothers her eyes - or did until more recently it seems. So one way I'm watching Atari Archive's video on the history of Combat and she says "that game looks fun" - so of course, I went to Cap N' Games expecting this eternally popular $.99 special to be there in droves...nope! But I did find "Tank Plus" - which is the same game. So I bought that instead of a proper COMBAT. A more interesting thing I'm surprised nobody has bothered to try, is all this talk of A.I. - and nobody has tried controlling the second player of Combat with A.I. via the cartridge port! Think of it, GPIO off a Raspberry Pi with a basic A.I. designed to manipulate the controller inputs based off what it sees via a webcam! This would be a fun modern project for messing with old 2-player only games.Videos Walkthroughs/Manuals/Reviews |
