The game was first re-released on Wii Virtual Console in 2009, and then bundled in Namco Museum (2017) for Nintendo Switch. It is worth a playthrough for all Battle City fans, but if the gameplay cycle still doesn’t click, the momentum will likely wear off somewhere in the halfway.
The new boss battles look awesome for sure, but in practice, they’re always an assortment of turrets that remain at the upper part of field and never stop launching missiles, so it boils down to racing against clock until they chip away all the objects to shield yourself and the base. A few novel ideas sprinkled here and there aren’t enough to shake up the status quo. In fact, with much more aggressive flock of tanks darting in, both in terms of weaponry and numbers, camping is more necessary than ever. Majority of the additions are about iterating the existing mechanics, and thus, the underling fundamental strategy – staying near your base and sniping whatever comes in – has not changed. It does, however, feel like the game doesn’t want to do more than retreading the old ground, especially given the technological gap from the predecessors. Tank Force marks many checkboxes of what a sequel should be: bigger, fancier, and offering an extravagant tank-wrecking experience that suits it to a T. Some stages are viciously designed in a way your base is exposed to all directions and it takes a considerable distance to travel back and forth, and it’s this point that the game becomes truly quarter-munching without bringing in a friend. Enemies can now appear from sidelines, sparing a tighter window to handle them, and it’s difficult to recoup a lost ground once you get killed and revert to a feeble, default form. The drawback is that the game’s balanced to be much harder to play solo. There’s also a rarer 4-player version that was only released outside of Japan. Friendly fire only pushes you back a bit, instead of stunning you for a few seconds like in Battle City, and your base is immune to ally’s weapon, which certainly helps not blowing it up by accident. Tank Force puts focus on the 2-player mode, making many changes to nullify its disadvantage. There’s also an actual music to go with this time, pumping out the FM synth as hard as it can. Every fourth round introduces a boss fight in form of a comically gigantic mechanical fort, like those found in vertical shoot-em-ups. There’re 36 stages in total, about as long as the NES game, and the levels themselves now rotate among a variety of realistic-looking battlefields, instead of the abstract kinds found in Battle City. The antagonizing forces have new faces as well, including the jeeps that deploy dynamites all over the place, and the huge, armored vehicles that discharge stronger projectiles, quickly dismantling environments around them. Power-ups, now spawning automatically on field, include an array of items that grant temporary armament upgrade, such as shrinking the size of your tank for smaller hitbox, or a wave beam that goes through walls.
The crux of the gameplay is about the same, but comes with many bells and whistles, as expected from a jump to much more powerful hardware. The last game to be powered by Namco System 1 (which housed some of the late ‘80s hit titles like Dragon Spirit and Splatterhouse), Tank Force adopts the framework established in Battle City and ups the ante exponentially. Demo, Mita Chan Music composer: John Adviser: Devil, S.It would take another six years until Namco put out the next installment in the series, developed exclusively for arcades. Kounoe Programmer: Boku Graphic designers: Mr. Sawano Director: Wan Wan Game designers: Mr. There is no point threshold which awards an extra life here.
Extra life can be earned only after getting a tank powerup. TIPS AND TRICKS Bosses are encountered every 4 rounds. The 4-player version has no start button instead the game begins after pressing the shoot button. UPDATES The US version is slightly different, it has the 'Winners Don't Use Drugs' screen. Victor Entertainment released a limited-edition soundtrack album for this game (Namco Video Game Graffiti Vol.9 - VICL-8089) on. The powerups are mostly inspired by these from Battle City. The round 17 is an illustration of "Pac-Man".
TECHNICAL Namco System 1 hardware Game ID: TF Main CPU: Motorola M6809 1.536 Mhz) Sub CPU: Motorola M6809 1.536 Mhz) Sound CPU: Motorola M6809 1.536 Mhz) MCU: HD63701 1.536 Mhz) Sound Chips: Yamaha YM2151 3.57958), Namco advanced 8-channel stereo WSG, stereo DAC Screen orientation: Horizontal Video resolution: 288 x 224 pixels Screen refresh: 60.61 Hz Palette colors: 24-bit RGB palette Players: 2 (or 4) Control: 4-way joystick Buttons: 1 (FIRE) TRIVIA Released in December 1991. Arcade Video game published 32 years ago: Tank Force © 1991 Namco.
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