I've been on the search for any and all kinds of video games released in the past that I haven't been able to play before. And when I see a game that I've actually never HEARD about before, it makes me want to play the game even more! Well, it seems that this game (previously a Japan only exclusive), has finally been translated and has made it stateside, so now players in North America can see exactly what the challenge is. While the challenge certainly can't be called ACCURATE to real life (though I can certainly overlook that, given that this game only HAS eight bits of graphics to work with), the challenge of each stage is very simple. Defend your fort (symbolized by an eagle), which is only surrounded by a brick wall two pixels wide. Lose those two pixels and let your eagle get turned into a burnt surrender flag, and it's game over for you. So, you have to use your golden tank, to hunt down all the enemy tanks trying to gun down your fort. You can pick up stars to increase your fire power to allow you to blast through steel walls (just be careful to NOT accidentally shoot through your OWN protective wall and hit your eagle), you can grab stopwatches to temporarily freeze the enemies in their tracks, you can grab a helmet to give your tank temporary invincibility, you can grab a tank icon to give yourself another tank in case your tank gets shot, you can grab a shovel to temporarily make your protective wall a STEEL wall that the enemy tanks CAN'T blast through, and you can even grab a grenade to destroy any of the tanks (only four of the twenty will ever appear on the screen at any one time), on the screen at the time, just be warned that doing so will make those tanks not count towards the overall final stage tally score. The stage hazards are fairly standard for the time, overhead trees that will obscure your view, rivers that you can't cross, walls that you have to blast through in order to make it easier to get to the enemy, and even ice that will make it harder to stop your tank when it goes across it. The graphics, music, sound, and controls are pretty decent by 8 bit standards. While the challenge was probably difficult enough back in the day, it definitely feels less so these days, thanks to this game's inclusion on the "Namco Museum Archives Vol. 2" for the Nintendo Switch, with it's helpful rewind and save feature. But, if you want to play one of the first good examples of a tank shooter game, than it's hard to go wrong with this game. Enough said, true believers!
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