by Mega-Dan Thu Dec 28, 2006 7:50 am
Battle City:
System: NES
Battle City is a great co-operative tank game that I believe began its existence before the NES even came out, and was a first generation NES game, Nintendo 8-bit games don't get any more retro than Battle City. What makes this game a hidden gem is the multiplayer co-operative play that stressed strategy, patience and skill over button mashing. It is also one of the easiest to pick up and play co-operative two player games, and that is why it is in my top five two player games of all time.
The basic gameplay is that you and/or a friend are tanks who have to defend a little city at the bottom of the screen from a onslaught of enemy tanks. Some enemy tanks are quick, some take two shots, and some fire very quickly. The key to victory is for you and your friend to take positions where you can ambush the enemy and minimize your own exposure to enemy fire. What complicates this game is the power-ups that appear, some of which are worth getting and others which absolutely are not. Sometimes you will be in a great position, but will absolutely want a tank upgrade which will allow you to fire through metal walls or fire faster or even destroy all enemies on the level, but will risk your life and your friend's doing so. The shovel in particular stands out as being a pretty useless power-up, except in certain situations.
Even though the game is inherently co-operative, there are some elements that are competitive as well, for example the score system gives a pretty tidy score to a player for picking up power-ups and rewards the player who kills the most enemy tanks not only just with the points for the tanks themselves, but with a bonus. Also, there is a form of friendly fire in this game, where you can stun each other, but it is only temporary, but it is often deadly because it often happens when enemies are around.
The controls are as simple as it can get, you move with the directional pad, and you fire with one of the buttons. Those are the only controls in battle city. It is a great pick up and play game when someone comes to your house, there is no explaining how to play it. Also, although you can't save your game, you can start at any level you want from the start screen, which is probably the only way you will ever see all the levels in battle city, since you cannot continue.
One element about this game that seems unnecessarily unforgiving is that if you die after upgrading your tank you lose all your upgrades, and there are three levels of upgrades. On the higher levels having to start again with no upgrades feels like running around naked, but you can still make a come back easily if your playing two-player, but single player would be exteremly challenging. It is important to protect your city, if the enemy blows up your city, game over, literally, you play for an hour your dumped back at the title screen. Battle City in general is a very difficult game, and even if you can manage not to get killed, your city often will, which makes the game more complicated than it appears. I have played alot of Battle City and can safely say that if anyone can beat this game starting on level one and not using save states, they are a super-hero of gaming.
The real problem of this game is the graphics, as I mentioned before this is a first generation Nintendo Entertainment System game (before it was commonly known as NES), and this game was a port of an older computer game I believe (I had it or something similar for the Atari 800). It is evident how old this game is by the fact that there is no scrolling and the original Super Mario Brothers looks much better. You can think of this game as amazing looking Commodore 64 game, or an ugly NES game, but either way at this point evey NES game is pretty outdated looking. What really matters is that the gameplay in Battle City holds up, and is still a great game to play with a girlfriend or anyone, you can pick it up and start playing right away without having to explain the buttons. I have been a little hard on this game, but it is great, and you should try it.