Well, my age is showing again as I get nostalgic reading the news about “Battlezone” now back as a virtual reality game. I was an avid arcade gamer as well as heavily into the Atari console games in the 1980s before I found airsoft later on the during that awesome decade of weird hairstyles and new wave music.

“Battlezone” in its original form was a an arcade game where you play wearing faux goggles as you command a tank to battle against other tanks and missiles. The graphics then was primitive as it used wireframe vector graphics where the most of the things you see are geometric solids to depict terrain and obstacles. It was a pseudo 3D game and with the use of the goggles of the arcade version made it the first “VR” game (the Atari console and home computer system ports such as the IBM PC and Apple II did not require the use of the faux goggles). But even with such limitations in video games during those years, “Battlezone” was an honorable mention for “Best Commercial Arcade Game: at the Third Annual Arkie Awards in 1982.

Battlezone Original (1980)

There were many clones of “Battlezone” but the original game still got released 1995, 2006, with the when Stainless Games ported the Atari game to the Microsoft Xbox 360 with new gameplay features in 2008. Of course, it had much better graphics and audio (5.1 Dolby)  but retained the core of the game which gamers (including airsoft players) are much familiar with since the introduction of CounterStrike and Team Fortress --- Death Match, Capture the Flag, and Team Deathmatch.

By 2015 Rebellion, the developer behind “Sniper Elite” did a reboot to the game creating the game for PlayStation VR which became a hit last year and now is moving the game to the PC so it can be used with the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive making it an even better VR game with the gamer a tank commander with using the top VR goggles using the Oculus technology. With the port to the PC the reviews have come in praising it to be one of the finest VR game titles.

Battlezone is available at 15% off right now at US$33.99 from the Rebellion website, Steam or the Oculus Store.