Armor Attack

Armor Attack is a 1980 arcade game, with the design credited to Tim Skelly and the release to GCE. The record notes support for one player or more and a side view, though for a tank game fought through city streets the playfield is more naturally read from above - the classification here is a simplification.

1980 is a meaningful marker in arcade history. Cabinets of that period worked with simple graphics and very few colours, and the concept had to be legible within seconds, because a player dropped a coin without reading anything first. Tank combat in a maze of streets fits that brief exactly: the objective is obvious and the rules become clear on the first hit taken.

The player count field deserves attention. Cabinets from the turn of the eighties frequently carried two sets of controls side by side, letting two people alternate or play at once. Shared play on a single machine was commercially powerful - twice the coins for one session.

Tim Skelly belonged to the small group of designers credited by name in that era, which was unusual at a time when development teams were mostly anonymous.

Arcade economics dictated the length of a session as well. A machine had to get a player in fast and out again just as fast, so that it could turn over as many times an hour as possible. Difficulty therefore ramped sharply after the first minute, and games were tuned so that every ending felt like the player's own mistake.

Drop in and play: this cabinet starts right in your browser at OldGame.cz, with the year, the designer credit and images on the same page.