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It was 1994. The world was just like a slippery, slidy world from a badly designed platform game. It was the day Johan Olav Koss won the 10.000 metres speedskating in a little Norwegian city called Lillehammer, leaving the Dutch with a Trauma which would take years to lose.
For me the skating wasn't that important that day. I took my humble A500 with me, after assuring my mum for the tenth time it wasn't too dangerous to bring it. I took it with me on the subway to one of Amsterdam's more shady districts called Gein.
I entered a little community centre. It was filled with geeks and Amigas. Some of them I talked to using BBS's and Fidonet, in those pre-mass internet days. Silently I plugged the power in and switched my A500 on. I have never having been much of a coder myself. Sure, i made some basic C64 games and dabbled around with Amos, but that was were my programming stardom stopped.
But the thing these people made were simply incredible. It was the time of State of the Art and Jesus on E's, and here were people who actually had worked on those beautful videos.
But for me the games were more important. Surely, lots of Amiga screens just showed X-Copy during the whole day, but the two most important games in the Scene, were two public domain games: Deluxe Galaga and Scorched Tanx.
This review is about Scorched Tanx. Two or Four Tanks and you took turns to shoot at each other. A super simple concept, as I played my first game which was like this, Stone Sling, some day in 1982 on the Philips G7000. This was the Zenith of the genre. Lots of the coders present had actively thought up weapons for the game, from strange gophers to nukes. It enhanced the genre with shields and realistic terrain effects.
It allowed me to gain some respect in this scene, as no one could launch laser like I could. It remains a mystery to me how Team 17 could ruin this super simple concept with quite a few games in later years. How could one worm have 4 times as many turns as the team which was still without damage.
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The graphics weren't that special, but enough to create a gloomy atmosphere.
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No great music, but the exploding sounds provided exactly what was needed.
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Endless fun in two player mode. There is nothing like exactly finding how to aim a laser and then destroy your friend, just before he is going to do that with you.
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| A shareware classic with cult status. |
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Get Amiga Forever with pre-installed Workbench, games, applications, and much more.
It also contains the original Amiga ROM-files, 100% legally!
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