Super Battle Tank review - Super Nintendo

Garry Kitchen - a name to instill fear in the heart of evil Johnny Foreigner. Who is he that he should have this Gulf War Simulation named after him? A courageous tank platoon leader? Or perhaps a General, overseeing the land war strategy? No, Garry Kitchen is in fact the creator of Donkey Kong.

Super Battletank is a souped-up remake of Garry's ancient Atari classic, Battletank and pitches the budding tank commander right in the middle of the Gulf land war. The action follows actual military strategies in disposing of tanks, helicopters, SCUD sites and, once the main mission is accomplished, enemy strongholds alike. Remember, CNN is counting on you.

What the Mean Machines staff thought

We were all ready to get excited over Super Battletank when we saw the early screenshots. It must be said that the graphics are nothing short of stunning, smoothly animated and highly detailed. The sound is pretty good too, although the constant engine noise does get a bit annoying and a tune wouldn't have gone amiss. Sadly, this is just about all Super Battletank has going for it. Although the graphics are great, only a tiny amount of the play area is visible at one time through the minute windscreen of the tank. Also, the action is very samey. Drive over to an enemy. He then zooms towards you, guns a-blazing then turns and drives away. This action is repeated, regardless of whether your foe is a tank or helicopter. There is never more than one target attacking at one time, thus no tactics are required at all. Sadly, the attacks on major enemy targets consist of little more than targeting a series of muzzle-flashes before your tank is destroyed. There are only ten missions, all of which are more or less the same, and no password system, so you have to repeat the even-duller first levels every time you play. Battlezone was all very well on the old Atari, but a lot more is required for a machine as sophisticated as the Super NES. This is neither action-packed enough to b a good shoot 'em up or deep and realistic enough to be a simulation.

I remember the Atari VCS version of this years ago, and it was good, simple blasting fun. In trying to make this more sophisticated, somehow the programmers have lost that fun. Because you take on targets one at a time in what is basically very simple and straightforward combat there's insufficient action and excitement to get your adrenaline going. Another downer is that there are only ten missions which are all very similar bar the graphical differences, and once you've sussed the tank control it takes very little time to go all the way through them. The graphics and sounds are certainly excellent, but it's a shame they're wasted on this rather dull and limited tank game.