''Scorched Earth'' is a

shareware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer ...

artillery video game. It was released for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

in 1991, originally written by Wendell Hicken using

Borland C++ Borland C++ is a C and C++ IDE (integrated development environment) for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. It was the successor to Turbo C++ and included a better debugger, the Turbo Debugger, which was written in protected mode DOS. Libraries O ...

and

Turbo Assembler Turbo Assembler (sometimes shortened to the name of the executable, TASM) is an assembler for software development published by Borland in 1989. It runs on and produces code for 16- or 32-bit x86 MS-DOS and compatible on Microsoft Windows. It ...

. Players control

tank A tank is an armoured fighting vehicle intended as a primary offensive weapon in front-line ground combat. Tank designs are a balance of heavy firepower, strong armour, and good battlefield mobility provided by tracks and a powerful engin ...

s to do

turn-based In video and other games, the passage of time must be handled in a way that players find fair and easy to understand. This is usually done in one of the two ways: real-time and turn-based. Real-time Real-time games have game time progress cont ...

battle in two-dimensional terrain, adjusting the angle and power of each tank turret before each shot.

Gameplay

''Scorched Earth'' is one of many games in the genre of "turn-based

artillery Artillery is a class of heavy military ranged weapons that launch munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during siege ...

games". Such games are among the earliest computer games, with versions existing for mainframes with only teletype output. ''Scorched Earth'', with a plethora of weapon types and power-ups, is considered the modern archetype of its format. The game has a wide variety of customization options from gravity, wind, money, meteorite showers, and a similarly large pool of different

payload Payload is the object or the entity which is being carried by an aircraft or launch vehicle. Sometimes payload also refers to the carrying capacity of an aircraft or launch vehicle, usually measured in terms of weight. Depending on the nature of ...

s, allowing for a large amount of entirely different situations. The AI players can display text messages before firing, such as "I shall smash your ugly tank!" and before dying, such as "Join the army, see the world they said". The weapons range from small missile rounds to

MIRV A multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) is an exoatmospheric ballistic missile payload containing several warheads, each capable of being aimed to hit a different target. The concept is almost invariably associated with in ...

warheads to high-yield nuclear weapons. All weapons can be upgraded with

tracers Tracer may refer to: Science * Flow tracer, any fluid property used to track fluid motion * Fluorescent tracer, a substance such as 2-NBDG containing a fluorophore that is used for tracking purposes * Histochemical tracer, a substance used for tr ...

which allow the player to more accurately adjust the

trajectory A trajectory or flight path is the path that an object with mass in motion follows through space as a function of time. In classical mechanics, a trajectory is defined by Hamiltonian mechanics via canonical coordinates; hence, a complete traj ...

on their next turn. In addition to conventional warheads, there is also ordnance such as

napalm Napalm is an incendiary mixture of a gelling agent and a volatile petrochemical (usually gasoline (petrol) or diesel fuel). The name is a portmanteau of two of the constituents of the original thickening and gelling agents: coprecipitated al ...

, wildly bouncing bombs, and earth weapons - allowing the player to dump dirt on other tanks or to remove ground from beneath them. A tank which is covered with dirt has to shoot itself free and may get damaged in the process; one which falls from too high a level may be destroyed. A variety of utilities, such as deflector shields, recharge batteries, and tank

parachute A parachute is a device used to slow the motion of an object through an atmosphere by creating drag or, in a ram-air parachute, aerodynamic lift. A major application is to support people, for recreation or as a safety device for aviators, who ...

s, make it much harder to score a kill with a single hit even with the more bizarre and advanced weapons, adding another dimension to the game's tactics. Projectiles can be manipulated in their flight-path by

wind Wind is the natural movement of air or other gases relative to a planet's surface. Winds occur on a range of scales, from thunderstorm flows lasting tens of minutes, to local breezes generated by heating of land surfaces and lasting a few hou ...

, shields and guidance systems, and sometimes have partially random effects. Walls may have a bouncing effect, wrap-around, or no effect, as may the ceiling. As the player advances in the game, they can afford more and more powerful weapons, as can their opponents. The game can be played against up to nine other human players and/or computer-controlled ones. A broad range of differently skilled player types is available. If the player-controlled tanks are destroyed before the others, the AI-controlled players continue to battle each other, turning Scorched Earth into a

zero-player game A zero-player game or no-player game is a simulation game that has no sentient players. Types There are various different types of games that can be considered "zero-player". Determined by initial state A game that evolves as determined by ...

History

The earliest version is 1.0b. Public versions include 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, and 1.5, which was released in

1995 File:1995 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: O.J. Simpson is O. J. Simpson murder case, acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from the 1994, year prior in "The Trial of the Century" in the United States; The ...

. Although 1.0B looks graphically similar to the later versions, in-game, its menus are completely different. It is not as

feature-rich In software, the term feature has several definitions. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers defines the term ''feature'' in IEEE 829 as " distinguishing characteristic of a software item (e.g., performance, portability, or functio ...

and contains some different AI class names, such as "Rifleman" and "Twanger" (which may have been changed, as they are also AI class names in the slightly earlier artillery game, ''Tank Wars''). Starting with 1.0 in 1991, the game became

and is graphically what became ''Scorched Earth''. In version 1.1, more weapons were added, such as Napalm, Smoke Tracers, and Liquid Dirt as well as Joystick support and two new death animations among other things. Also in 1.1, a modem icon was added with the intention of including some form of net play in a following version, however, this feature was never implemented. Nearly one year later, in 1992, version 1.2 was released which includes a new death animation and Synchronous firing mode. The final version of 1.50 was released in 1995. In 1.5, the registration feature was removed and instead, only a shareware version was released freely while the registered version could be obtained through a mail order only. Purchasing the registered version allowed the player to use the triple-turreted tank as well as removing the shareware reminders. New to this version were lasers, SuperMags, and some scenery.

Reception

Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American computer game magazine published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 1993. It expanded greatly through ...

'' in 1993 called ''Scorched Earth'' "the most configurable artillery game I have come across ... the most playable and addictive", with "quite good"

SVGA Super VGA (SVGA) is a broad term that covers a wide range of computer display standards that extended IBM's VGA Video Graphics Array (VGA) is a video display controller and accompanying de facto graphics standard, first introduced with the I ...

graphics. The magazine concluded that the game was "a bargain for its modest" $10 price. In 2008, Mark J. P. Wolf said in his book ''The Video Game Explosion'' that this is "probably one of the best loved PC shareware games", as a popular early multiplayer " hot seat" game.

Legacy

In a 2005 interview, Wendell Hicken said that he talked to several publishers about developing a new official sequel. Numerous

artillery game Artillery games are two or three-player (usually turn-based) video games involving tanks (or simply cannons) trying to destroy each other. The core mechanics of the gameplay is almost always to aim at the opponent(s) following a ballistic trajec ...

s that were inspired by ''Scorched Earth'' include ''Atomic Tanks'', ''Charred Dirt'', ''Nasty Armoured Tanks of War'', ''xscorch'', and ''

Scorched 3D ''Scorched 3D'' is a free and open source artillery game modeled after the MS-DOS game ''Scorched Earth (video game), Scorched Earth''. ''Scorched 3D'' is licensed under the GNU General Public License, GNU GPL-2.0-or-later, and supports numerous p ...

''.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Scorched Earth (Video Game) 1991 video games Artillery video games DOS games DOS-only games Multiplayer hotseat games Shareware Tank simulation video games Video games developed in the United States