Tank Battalion

Tank Battalion (タンクバタリアン Tanku Batarian) is a multi-directional shooter arcade game developed and published by Namco in 1980. It was ported to MSX, and an improved version titled Battle City was released for the Family Computer in 1985, with a GameBoy version being released in 1991. A sequel, titled Tank Force was released for arcades in 1991, which would later be ported to the Nintendo Switch in 2017 as part of Namco Museum.

Gameplay

The player controls a yellow tank with the joystick, and fires a bullet with the button. The player is required to shoot 20 blue tanks (similar to the company's Warp & Warp, released in 1981) to complete each round. The player (and tanks) can destroy the brick walls littering the playing field, but can't destroy the green-checkerboard wall around the screen. The player also has to protect the base (marked as an eagle on the playing field) at the bottom of the screen. The player receives a game over if the tanks destroy the base, no matter how many lives the player has left (humorously, the player can also destroy the base, also resulting a game over). The game is also over if the player runs out of lives.

Sequels and remakes

In 1985, Namco released an improved version of Tank Battalion named Battle City. It had different levels, improved graphics and sounds, a level editor and co-op play. It was released for both the Family Computer and Game Boy, with the Game Boy version being included in the compilation Namco Gallery Vol. 1 in 1996, along with Mappy, Galaga and Namco Classic.

A sequel, known as Tank Force, was released in 1991 in Japan only, and featured improved graphics, co-op and new enemy types. The game was later released for the Wii Virtual Console in 2009 and was later included in the Namco Museum compilation for the Nintendo Switch in 2017.

In 2014, a programmer named "Beamrider" created a homebrew port of the original Tank Battalion for the Commodore Vic-20.