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Free Duel, Oh This Hot Seat Of Ours
Round One: In The Beginning
I'd rate flying little v-shaped ships with oversized firepower as my personally most enjoyed subgenre of these games, but since they weren't the first ones around, I'll give the glorious privilege of being presented in the opening round to over-head viewed tanks. Whee.
Fire Power must have been the first one for me. You can choose one of the few different tanks, and then must penetrate the other player's HQ's defenses and find a flag to capture. Played very few times at friend's when I was very young, I can't say I've been a fan or anything, but playing (ok, trying to play, couldn't get it to a playable state) it now more than ten years later is kinda nostalgic. But it's a commercial game, and we are concetrating on share- and freeware games here, so forwards we go.
Tunneler was also an early encounter for me. Not that remarkable anyhow. Tunneler may be a classic, but to me, it seemed more like two goats banging their horns against each other in an even more dumb way than the usual testosterone bullshit. Two tanks digging around in dirt did include some clever terrain-abusing tactics, but still, whoever got the first shots in usually won. On top of that, the game is possibly one of the first to include camping in one's own base as a potent strategy. Grievous. Or perhaps it's just that my reflexive/tactical skills had not yet matured and I simply lost every battle I fought. It now does look like a fun though a very simple game, where surprising your opponent is important - although hard since (s)he can always look at your side of screen - and making sure you don't run out of fuel even more important.
TANKKK, on the other hand, was a bliss in its time. This Finnish shareware oldie boasts not only two, but three tanks. There's no dirt to dig around. Instead, a maze-ish arena is given for the players to fight in. There are enough options to choose from to make it play differently if wanted, you can choose from two different levels (agreed, not much) and choose whether shots bounce from or destroy walls. Different tactics are required - if you play with the latter, you'll probably try to burrow through the walls to get at your opponent, while ducking away with the remains yourself, kinda Space Invader-ish way.
On the other hand, with bouncing shots, you'll be aiming around the corners and having fun with ricochets. By setting the distance of shots at maximum, you can fire a string of shots which seem to bounce around forever - as you can only fire five shots each time. There the game becomes a little strange, as you'll be waiting for your weapon to "recharge" and dodge those bullets, trying to fool your opponent(s) into them. The controls of the tanks have a bit of an inertia, and it's possible to get stuck on a wall, in which case you must hit reverse - controls are kind of peculiar, and playing this
game is unlike any other. Especially if you have two friends to play with, and a keyboard that doesn't keyjam (too much), you might be having some fierce competition and a load of fun.
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