Zee Artillery

Fire what you've got. Zee Artillery is a straightforward DOS arcade from 1999 that asks just one thing: can you calculate your shot's angle and power better than your opponent? Nothing more, nothing less.

It's the millionth iteration of the ballistic tournament formula. Two tanks stand on a sandy map, taking turns moving and firing, and the goal is to smash the other one before you end up a pile of scrap yourself. You control the angle, weapon power, and wait to see if your shot hits or you take a punch from your opponent's blast. Wind conditions and terrain bumps occasionally throw off your calculations, but at its core it's math and luck in whatever ratio your experience determines.

Early DOS graphical style — hollow lines, choppy sprites, sounds like they came from a cheap soundcard. The physics work; if this were a game that constantly surprised you with insane calculations, it'd drive you nuts. Instead it's boring watching to see if you landed the hit. The menu is straightforward, modes exist — singleplayer against the computer, multiplayer, different difficulties — but everything revolves around one mechanic. Playing isn't hard, it's just slow. Every moment waiting for the computer to take its turn drains a bit of your energy.

Games like this were everywhere in the nineties — Scorched Earth, Worms later blasted this concept to the stars. Zee Artillery stands somewhere at the back of the line and doesn't apologize for it one bit. It's a game made by someone who liked the idea, but innovation never got into their DNA.

Today it's a curiosity. You reach for it when it occurs to you to play around with tanks and angle calculations, but then you remember why you'd rather grab Worms or some modern tactics game instead. You can boot it up in an emulator — it's solid DOS fare — but not out of nostalgia, more out of curiosity about what it was like to be at the absolute bottom rung of the ladder.