M-1 Abrams Battle Tank
System: Genesis
Release Date: April 1991
Developer: Dynamix
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Genre: Simulation
Turn the tide of World War III in favor of the West in M-1 Abrams Battle Tank! The Cold War has boiled over and it’s all out war as the Soviet troops pour into Germany. The path to victory hinges on the performance of you and your crew in the titular tank. Equipped with plenty of armament and the strongest armor our R&D division can create, you have eight missions in front of you to win the war before it escalates further.
You’re in the cockpit of the tank and can change heading by pressing left or right on the d-pad. Controls are momentum based, so if you press right, the tank will continue rotating clockwise until you press left to even it out. This is incredibly imprecise and quite annoying. Your speed is increased by pressing up and decreased by pressing down. Again, this is a situation where you set your speed, you don’t have to keep pressing it.
There are different views that you can switch among by pressing the C Button and then scrolling to the right. Commander View gives you a long-range or short-range map you can look at. These don’t mark enemies or important locations, so are quite useless. You can’t shoot in this view, and must switch to Gunner View. You can press the B Button to mark enemies on the screen. This is important, because you want to make sure you’re targeting Soviets and not Allies. Killing your own men will get you discharged faster than you can say, “I didn’t realize they were a friendly!” There are three different missiles, a machine gun, and smoke canister that you can deploy as long as you have ammo.
Some missions are set at night and you can switch to a thermal view, which turns the battlefield red and may make it easier to see enemies. The first mission I was sent on took me an hour to get through, moving from point A to point B takes forever, even at top speed, even if you have the governor turned off. If I got my heading straight, I would turn on fast forward just to make it less of a slog. This opens you up to attack from enemies, though, so must be done cautiously. If you take too much damage, you need to limp back to your supply depot to fix your tank and reload your weapons.
The missions range from destroy enemy bases, to save allied units, to destroy a different target. What mission you start on is random and the General is really animated during your briefings. He’s also quite animated during your post-mission briefings. The better you do, the higher score you earn. Finish all eight missions and score high. I know I didn’t.
Graphics: 1.5
The polygonal graphics are poor, though it’s kind of neat in cupola view.
Sound: 0.5
The constant drone of the engine is bad and the weapon noises are tinny and weak.
Gameplay: 1.0
Trying to get anywhere is incredibly slow moving and the amount of over correction that occurs doing moving is quite annoying.
Difficulty: 1.0
Fighting the controls is the main difficulty you encounter. Open the manual to find useful maps.
Fun Factor: 1.0
Once I got more acclimated to the controls and started using fast forward judiciously, it was more tolerable, but still no fun.
Overall Rating: 1.0
M-1 Abrams Battle Tank earns a D. If this is how World War III is going to be fought, it’s going to be a long war of attrition.