[typing]
As a result of my experience growing up alongside the birth of the Internet,
I'm in possession of some curiously fond memories of America Online.
Most important to this review, though, is the AOL Games channel in versions 3.0 and 4.0.
It held a treasure trove of secrets in the form of downloadable .ZIP archives,
one of which was Combat Tanks,
developed by Michael Morrison and Randy Weems under the name Red Herring.
This was a game that defied all expectations for 10-year-old me,
which is either high praise or wildly inconsequential,
depending on how you look at it.
In 1994, when Combat Tanks released for Windows 3.1,
I had a grand total of, like, two games for Windows.
So any game that wasn't for DOS was like a Holy Grail of sorts.
And if it was fun AND free,
well I may as well have just won the lottery.
In my mind, Windows 3.1 games were something to be cherished.
And part of that sentiment remains with me to this day.
Now Combat Tanks in particular was special to me
because it was an action game,
far removed from the standard fare of puzzle and card games
like you'd often find in the Microsoft Windows Entertainment Packs that I had.
Not only that, but it was an action game that didn't suck.
Unlike Blitzer, which was just a twisted clone of Fort Apocalypse.
Instead, this was a twisted clone of Combat for the Atari 2600,
or more specifically, the tank mode from that game.
You control a tank with the arrow keys and have a button for shooting,
and also a button for swapping weapons.
"Kill or be killed" is the golden rule, as you would expect,
so shoot the crap out of everything until it stops moving.
Primarily, you make use of your unlimited small caliber rounds,
which work just like they did in Atari's Combat,
They shoot straight forward
and have a chance to bounce off walls,
but fail to dole out much damage.
You also have mines, which will drop behind your tank,
and deal a significant chunk of damage to any ground-based enemies unlucky enough to cross it.
And then you've got rockets, which do the most damage
but are rather hard to come by and travel quite slowly.
It's all about surviving as many waves of these enemies as possible,
from other tanks
to foot soldiers that can be delightfully squished,
to helicopters and bombers that pick you off from above.
Other than some concrete barriers, bodies of water and mud hazards,
you won't see much that's more complicated than that.
Your foes are brain dead and entirely predictable,
but that's okay,
because there's so many of them that it becomes a nice challenge.
Actually, one of the designers, Michael Morrison,
also authored the book "Sams Teach Yourself Game Programming in 24 Hours,"
in which he stated that Combat Tanks was originally going to have
a single AI to play against.
But since it proved so challenging to create a competent AI,
he just went with a lot of stupid AI to balance it out.
And you know what? It works.
Just fight off everything that it mindlessly throws at you.
The levels will loop endlessly until you die.
It's that simple.
Combat Tanks was one of my favorite Windows 3.1 games for me back then,
and I loved trying to reach all three terrain types throughout the game.
Of course, in the shareware version, that was quite the feat,
since after a while it would spawn the Death Chopper,
an invincible black helicopter that haunted my nightmares for years.
There's no escaping Death Chopper.
And because your parents are broke,
there's no hope of that ever changing.
Eh, whatever. There was an insanely fun two-player mode as well,
that let you select various terrain types at any time,
along with extra modes like Versus Combat,
Cooperative Play and Capture the Flag.
The only downside is you had to play using the same keyboard,
so you had to be prepared to rub elbows and
accept some shoulder punches.
Combat Tanks is a brush with violence without becoming over-the-top.
And in the days of being a kid using Windows 3.1, that was good enough.
And apparently it was good enough for over 30,000 people to pay for it,
since that's the number that it sold at retail.
And yes, this was at one point sold in stores
by our friends at Personal Companion Software.
It may not have made millions or anything, but
it was a success by low-distribution shareware standards of its day,
and it sure left its mark on me.
Just speaking personally, I find that happiness is a commodity that's
somewhat difficult to glean from many games nowadays,
and so I find myself gravitating back towards things like this
that just pleased me on a deep level, once upon a time.
And it did so without even really trying. It just worked.
There's something consistently refreshing about a title
as simple and straightforward as Combat Tanks,
something that ages well enough without becoming too dated.
You play it for ten minutes.
You grin as you're killed off and get a high score.
Then maybe a couple years later, you'll come back and play it for ten minutes and that'll be fine.
That's Combat Tanks,
and I would never ask for it to be anything more.
[MIDI music]
And if you enjoyed this video and think that the game looks interesting enough,
well, the full version was released as freeware years ago by the developers.
So, just download it in the video description below and enjoy.
You can also check out some of my other videos on Windows 3.1 classics,
or subscribe to LGR to be notified when a new video is released.
Which happens every Monday and Friday, but, yeah, it's
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or just don't like looking at numbers.
I can understand that.
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And as always, thank you very much for watching.