For Death Tank on the Xbox 360, a GameFAQs message board topic titled 'Death Tank?'

Death Tank is a 1996 competitive multiplayer, 2D artillery game developed by Ezra Dreisbach of Lobotomy Software. Influenced by Scorched Earth, the gameplay is real-time instead of turn-based. It supports two to seven players, represented by differently-colored tanks, with a range of weapons. The terrain on which this occurs is heavily deformed during play.

The original Death Tank was a hidden bonus game in the Sega Saturn port of PowerSlave (1996). An update, Death Tank Zwei, was hidden in the Saturn version of Duke Nukem 3D (1997).

In a 1996 interview Lobotomy Software co-founder Brian McNeely said that Dreisbach 'threw [Death Tank] together in his spare time. We play it every day, religiously.'^[1] The title screen shows the red and blue tanks because these were the colors favored by Dreisbach and Jeff Blazier, who had an ongoing rivalry in the game.^[2]

Xbox Live Arcade version[edit]

Dreisbach, working with Snowblind Studios, developed a standalone version of the game for Xbox Live Arcade. It was released on Wednesday, February 18, 2009.

A version of Death Tank Zwei is included as an extra in this release, which can be unlocked by shooting down a supply plane in the main game. There are a number of minor differences between this new version and the original; it lacks the title screen (and Death Tank theme), options and player selection screens. The game has an upper limit of four players (instead of the original seven), and there are a number of changes to the names of the weapons.

Reception[edit]

Death Tank appears in the video gamereference book1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die edited by Tony Mott and published in October 2010 by Universe Publishing.^[3]

References[edit]

1. ^Leadbetter, Rich (December 1996). 'Lobotomised!'. Sega Saturn Magazine. No. 14. Emap International Limited. p. 48.
2. ^'Interview: Lobotomy Software Inc'. Sega Saturn Magazine. No. 25. Emap International Limited. November 1997. p. 49. Retrieved December 5, 2019.
3. ^https://www.mobygames.com/game/death-tank/trivia

External links[edit]

• Death Tank at MobyGames

This week's Xbox Live Arcade release is an updated version of the legendary Death Tank, one of the most celebrated, and yet under-played party games ever developed. Devised and programmed by Ezra Dreisbach of Lobotomy Software, the full DT experience is difficult to convey, but it's usually described as a kind of real-time version of Scorched Earth or Worms, as if that's enough to convey the refined, distilled genius of this game.

It isn't.Of course, chances are that you've never played it, because getting access to the game was an ordeal in itself. Path to success 2 game. To access the original version required a US copy of Saturn title Exhumed (aka Powerslave) and you needed to completely vanquish the game, not just by defeating the final level but also by locating hidden 'Team Dolls' dotted throughout the levels - a task worthy of a strategy guide in itself. Even after that, you needed the Saturn's eight-player multi-tap to get the full party experience. Things got easier when Lobotomy released its Saturn conversions of Duke Nukem 3D and Quake, which auto-unlocked the improved Death Tank Zwei if you had an existing save-game from another Lobotomy release on your system.Criminally under-exposed, under-played, and under-appreciated for a game some believe to be a classic of its era, Ezra Dreisbach has spent the last three years re-coding and retooling Death Tank from scratch exclusively for Xbox 360 with full Xbox Live support, brand new single-player game variations, and a handsome new set of graphics. Even the free trial version is rather good.When Microsoft offered us the chance to talk to Ezra, we jumped at the chance.

Aside from the excellent Death Tank, Lobotomy Software produced some of the most technically advanced software of its time, defying John Carmack's belief that Quake could never be converted to the Saturn. The company's PlayStation output - although limited - was similarly excellent, with the conversion of Exhumed/Powerslave proving to be even better on the Sony console than the Saturn original.In this interview we step back in time, Kylie-style, to the mid-'90s, to the height of the Saturn/PlayStation rivalry, extract the full juicy details of the era from Lobotomy's perspective, and find out why the SEGA machine really was an 'insane abortion'. Then, remembering that we have an excellent new game to champion, we warp back to the present day and go in-depth on Death Tank for Xbox Live Arcade, and let the programmer tell you why he thinks it's worth 1200 of your precious Microsoft Points.Eurogamer:Ezra, let's start with some history. Not a huge amount is known about the genesis of Lobotomy but according to internet bible Wikipedia, you and the other guys started out at Nintendo of America. Were any of the seeds for your subsequent work planted by what you did with Nintendo?Ezra Dreisbach:That's really pretty inaccurate. The creative side of Lobotomy came from Nintendo, but the engineering side came from Manley and Associates, an early Seattle area game company. Lobotomy was my first gaming job, so my game programming heritage is really Manley by way of Lobotomy programmers Jeff Blazier and John Yuill.Eurogamer:During that period, first-person shooters were already hugely popular on PC, but the overall impression was that the consoles weren't up to the job.

Your game changed all that. What were you doing that nobody else could?Ezra Dreisbach:Japan was still the real centre of console game development in those days and Japanese mostly didn't care about first-person shooters. So there wasn't a lot of other console FPS development effort. Later when Lobotomy made the Duke/Quake Saturn ports, people had got good at the PlayStation, but hardly anyone outside Japan cared about Saturn.The main different thing about console FPS of that era is that every wall has to be diced into a grid of polygons. This is because there is no perspective-correct texture-mapping and, in the case of the Saturn, no way to clip. You really needed some custom tools to deal with/take advantage of this, and Lobotomy had Brew (made by David Lawson).Eurogamer:Saturn versus PlayStation, let's put this to rest once and for all. You helped oversee two of the most technically accomplished games on those systems, so lay it out for us, which machine did you prefer from a technical perspective and why?

What were the most rewarding and annoying aspects of both systems?Ezra Dreisbach:I didn't exactly oversee anything. Jeff Blazier programmed the entirety of Lobotomy's PlayStation output. But it's not hard to tell the PlayStation is better.The Saturn was really an insane abortion.

Your task is to choose the most important life goal right now and then run with it, doing your best to roll with the punches that life throws at you.Your ultimate goal may be to become a lawyer, but it won’t happen if you never even get into law school.The Categories of LifeQuests in Life Quest 2 are broken into categories, such as Startup, Academics, Fitness, Popularity, Athletics, Practicality, Leisure, Toys, Relationship, Medicine, Law and Finance.Categories can have different meanings depending on your life path. Life quest book. The only thing set in stone is your desire to escape that life. You’ve just graduated high school, so here’s your chance. The game is essentially a series of quests, twelve in all if everything goes well. It all starts in the character designer screen, where you’ll select your gender and then define your physical aspects down to the finest details, such as hairstyle, eye color and even the shape of your lips.The 12-Step ProgramThe structure to Life Quest 2 is what the game calls the 12-step program.

The graphics hardware was made by guys that obviously wanted to just keep developing 2D hardware and tried to avoid learning anything about 3D. So they made this thing that was totally different from what everyone else in the 3D community was doing and missed some real key ideas, making some things (clipping) impossible.And then the rest of the system had a whole other batch of warts caused (according to the internet) by a hasty pre-launch upgrade to match the PlayStation.

They threw a whole bunch more parts in the box, and none of them worked out that great. The second processor in particular made it both more difficult to program, and impossible to fully utilise.This probably ultimately doomed the Saturn. With so much different crap jammed in the box, it never got cheap for them to produce it.