Battlezone: Encyclopedia II - Battlezone - Legacy

Battlezone - Legacy

A clone (author unknown) of the game for DOS called "bzone.exe" circulated through the BBS community in the 1980s.

Throughout the 1980s, Battlezone was ported to several home computer systems, including DOS, the Apple II, Atari 2600, Atari ST, the Commodore 64, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the Atari XEGS and Atari Lynx (within that version is a hidden game with filled polygons).

A Battlezone clone named Stellar 7 was released on the Commodore 64 in the 1980s. It was ported to Apple II, DOS and Amiga. Its sequel, Nova 9, was later released on the Amiga and DOS by Sierra Online.

Atari 2600 Screenshot

C64 Screenshot

Activision, the video game publishing giant, released a game for Microsoft Windows inspired by and named Battlezone in 1998. Aside from the name, however, the game bears little resemblance to the original arcade game.

The game Tank Hunter on Pogo.com is almost an exact replica of Battlezone, complete with imitation vector graphics. The open source game BZFlag (BattleZone capture Flag) is available on SourceForge, and provides network play and full 3D graphics instead of vector graphics.

There was a bug in some machines which caused very high phony scores into the seven digits to be posted (after a player would enter his initials). Good players could actually reach this level after an hour or two of play.

There was a persistent rumor that, in the original game, if you kept driving in the same direction for at least an hour (without dying of course), you would eventually reach the mountains and see a "tank factory" pumping out enemy tanks. This rumor is almost certainly false.

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