Battlezone: Encyclopedia II - Battlezone - Development

Battlezone - Development

The vector technique is similar to the visuals of games such as Asteroids. The game was designed by Ed Rotberg, who designed many games for Atari, Atari Games, and Sente.

A version called The Bradley Trainer (also known as Army Battlezone or Military Battlezone) was also designed for use by the US army as targeting training for gunners on the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Only two of them were produced, one was delivered to the army and is presumed lost; the other is in a private collection. The gunner yoke was based on the Bradley Fighting Vehicle control and was later re-used in the popular Star Wars game. The Bradley Trainer differs dramatically from the original Battlezone as it features helicopters, missiles, machine guns and the actual tank does not move, the guns simply rotate. Apparently some developers within Atari refused to work on the project because of its association with the Army.

Also one cocktail version of Battlezone was developed as a prototype. This is also in a private collection.

Battlezone is widely considered the first true Virtual Reality game and The Bradley Trainer the first VR training device used by the US army.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Development", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki