Tank 1990 (ZX Spectrum)
by "Dwa83"

Tank 1990 is based on a number of games released mainly by Namco between 1980 and 1991, namely Tank Battalion (1980), Battle City (1985) and Tank Force (1991), amongst others. The aim of the game is always the same for all versions of which there are many for the arcade and nearly every make and model of home computer and home console imaginable, including a previous ZX Spectrum version. The previous version of the same name, Tank 1990, was published in 1990 by Chinese company Yanshan Software.

You control a tank on a map of varying terrain. Enemy tanks appear on the map and must be destroyed before they destroy you or your Imperial Eagle which is bricked in at the bottom centre of the map. If this is lost it's game over. After clearing twenty tanks you move onto the next map until you reach map 36 where victory means you win the game.

 

The title screen is a bit mysterious, it just says Tank 1990 in bricks and little else. There is no indication of what to press to start the game or what the control keys are. You press enter to start and this is also fire. Directional controls are Up (W), Down (S), Left (A), Right (D), and these cannot be changed.

 

Each map contains brick walls that can be destroyed by having either the player's tank or an enemy tank shoot at them, steel walls that cannot be destroyed or passed, bushes that provide camouflage, ice which gives your tank a sudden bout on unwanted inertia and water which cannot be crossed.

Flashing tanks drop power ups at a random place on the map once they are destroyed. A grenade acts like a smart bomb and destroys all enemy tanks. A helmet makes the tank invulnerable for a short time. A tank gives you an extra tank. A clock freezes the enemy tanks for a short time. The tanks move around fairly smoothly and the gameplay is pretty much fine. But many things are lacking. There are only ever three active enemy tanks. They are all white. They only ever require one hit to destroy. There's no points scoring at all, no multiplayer and no terrain editor. There are no game modes. The level number is not shown and the star and shovel power ups are missing. Sometimes power ups land on terrain which cannot be accessed or destroyed so you cannot collect it.

Instead of looping after completing level 36 this game has a victory screen. Having an actual end game is probably a good thing. The graphics whilst nothing special do the job. Audio is surprisingly lacking for a 128K game. There is an older and better version of this game called Battle City 128K. It was first created by Epsilon in 1996 but not released until it was recovered and improved in 2016. It has multiplayer, a map editor and all the power ups from the original. I'm surprised and disappointed that this newer version is not an improvement over Battle City 128K but actually inferior to it.

The game is as simple and playable as the original Namco tank games. It has decent enemy tank AI and movement, no colour clash on any terrain and an end game after the last map rather than a loop back to the beginning again. But it has a number of issues. There's a lack of info on the title screen, only one set of keyboard controls and power ups which are impossible to collect due to the type of terrain they appear on top of. There are features in the original game and also a previous Spectrum version which are sadly lacking in this Tank 1990.

Unfortunately this is a below average game that with a bit more polish, in areas where it is found to be lacking, could have been great or at least better than the previous incarnation for the Spectrum.