''Tanktics: Computer Game of Armored Combat on the Eastern Front'', also named ''Wargy I'', is a 1976 two-player

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 engi ...

battle video game by Chris Crawford. It was Crawford's first video game; it was initially sold directly by him, and was published by

Avalon Hill Avalon Hill Games Inc. is a game company that publishes wargames and strategic board games. It has also published miniature wargaming rules, role-playing games and sports simulations. It is a subsidiary of Hasbro, and operates under the company ...

in 1981 under the name ''Tanktics''. The game has no graphics; the player moves tokens on a physical map to represent a tank battle, with the computer controlling one of the sides. The game received weak reviews by critics, who found the artificial intelligence to be weak and suited for players who wanted neither a complex nor fast-paced game.

Gameplay

The game simulates a two-player

battle on a large

hex grid A hex map, hex board, or hex grid is a game board design commonly used in wargames of all scales. The map is subdivided into a hexagonal tiling, small regular hexagons of identical size. Advantages and disadvantages The primary advantage of a h ...

. ''Tanktics'' has no graphics; the player moves tokens on a map using coordinates the computer, acting as referee, provided. Crawford used maps and tokens from Avalon Hill's '' Panzer Leader'' when developing the game. To compensate for the computer's weak artificial intelligence, he gave it twice as many tanks as the player and deleted U-shaped lakes from the map. There are several

terrain Terrain or relief (also topographical relief) involves the vertical and horizontal dimensions of land surface. The term bathymetry is used to describe underwater relief, while hypsometry studies terrain relative to sea level. The Latin wo ...

types:

forest A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' ...

lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...

plain In geography, a plain is a flat expanse of land that generally does not change much in elevation, and is primarily treeless. Plains occur as lowlands along valleys or at the base of mountains, as coastal plains, and as plateaus or uplands ...

s, rough and depressed ground, and also roads which allow much faster movement. There are many types of tanks—different ones for the German and Russian side each—as well as stationary anti-tank guns. At the end of the game, a point system determines whether the player has won or lost the game.

Development

Crawford created the game, first called ''Wargy I'', in FORTRAN for the

IBM 1130 The IBM 1130 Computing System, introduced in 1965, was IBM's least expensive computer at that time. A binary 16-bit machine, it was marketed to price-sensitive, computing-intensive technical markets, like education and engineering, succeeding th ...

from May to September

1976 Events January * January 3 – The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights enters into force. * January 5 – The Pol Pot regime proclaims a new constitution for Democratic Kampuchea. * January 11 – The 1976 ...

, reporting that it defeated several experienced war gamers at a December 1976 convention. It was his first video game; he did not sell any copies, which he attributed to the IBM 1130 not being a consumer computer that war gamers would have. He ported it to a

KIM-1 The KIM-1, short for ''Keyboard Input Monitor'', is a small 6502-based single-board computer developed and produced by MOS Technology, Inc. and launched in 1976. It was very successful in that period, due to its low price (thanks to the inexp ...

, then the

Commodore PET The Commodore PET is a line of personal computers produced starting in 1977 by Commodore International. A single all-in-one case combines a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, Commodore BASIC in read-only memory, keyboard, monochrome monitor, ...

in December 1978. Crawford sold the PET version himself; as this version was programmed in BASIC, it was easy to port from one system to the other. By 1981, the game had been expanded and renamed into ''Tanktics'', and was published by

under that name for the

TRS-80 The TRS-80 Micro Computer System (TRS-80, later renamed the Model I to distinguish it from successors) is a desktop microcomputer launched in 1977 and sold by Tandy Corporation through their Radio Shack stores. The name is an abbreviation of '' ...

, Apple II, and Atari 8-bit family.

Reception

'' Computer Gaming World'' in 1982 reported that ''Tanktics''s computer opponent was not as intelligent as the manual claimed, advising players to give themselves "poorer tanks" once they began beating it often. While disliking how the game handled

line of sight The line of sight, also known as visual axis or sightline (also sight line), is an imaginary line between a viewer/observer/ spectator's eye(s) and a subject of interest, or their relative direction. The subject may be any definable object taken ...

, and bugs in the Apple II version (the review offered

unofficial patch An unofficial patch is a patch for a piece of software, created by a third party such as a user community without the involvement of the original developer. Similar to an ordinary patch, it alleviates bugs or shortcomings. Unofficial patches do ...

es for the BASIC

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...

), the magazine recommended it for those seeking neither arcade action nor the complexity of Avalon Hill's ''Panzer'' games or ''

Squad Leader ''Squad Leader'' is a tactical wargames, tactical level board war game originally published by Avalon Hill in 1977. It was designed by John Hill (game designer), John Hill and simulates on infantry combat in Europe during World War II. One of th ...

''. A 1991 survey in the magazine of strategy and war games gave ''Tanktics'' two and a half stars out of five.

References

External links

''Tanktics''
at Atari Mania * {{Chris Crawford 1976 video games Turn-based tactics video games Apple II games Atari 8-bit family games Commodore PET games Mainframe games TRS-80 games World War II video games Chris Crawford (game designer) games Video games developed in the United States