Big Fat Tank!
Release type: Incomplete
Release date: 1994
Levels: 1
Author: Alan Caudel
Website: DummyDuck.com
Related games: Godzilla
As with many of Alan Caudel's projects, Big Fat Tank! is less a game unto itself than a crystalized brainstorm. Old NES games often got away with interesting tricks by classifying parts of the background as huge monsters and whatnot. What if, by manipulating what is and is not considered a character sprite, you could design a character that filled the screen? How would that work?
Well... not seamlessly, but it's interesting. Here in principle, the player controls the tank, while the background auto-scrolls beneath it. Of course the tank is in fact a mass of background blocks, and the actual character sprite stays still the whole time. Due to the conceptual limitations, the player's agency is limited to firing the occasional shell at the oncoming hordes of enemy vehicles.
As a test case, Big Fat Tank! is a clever subversion of the given tools and formats, and their expected uses. Though it is not an unqualified success in its own right, there's the start of a neat idea in here. It just needs to find the right implementation.
Caudel later returned to the idea with Godzilla, improving on it in much the same way that Adventure builds on Scurvy the Squirrel. Godzilla still doesn't quite nail it, but it gets much closer. Clearly there's something in this idea...
Contents
Story[edit]
N/A
Instructions[edit]
Press the space bar to fire. Destroy all the jeeps!
After the jeeps, watch out for the armored car. It takes a bunch of hits to destroy. Don't let it pass you by!
Credits[edit]
Game designed by Alan Caudel.
Background[edit]
Alan Caudel:
- I knew that Big Fat Tank was pretty ridiculous, but I just wanted to see if I could make a huge character that took up most of the screen.
- I think my favorite part is the jeep explosions! I worked pretty hard to make them look good. And I like how if you time it right you can get a pretty long chain reaction of explosions going.
Availability[edit]
This game is not known to have been distributed in any form, prior to its addition to the Archive.
Archive History[edit]
On October 20, 2010, Caudel posted a comment to a YouTube video of Peach the Lobster, under the name dummyduckrulz; following up the conversation, on June 29, 2011 he provided a link to a collection of games recently uncovered by Adam Tyner. This initial archive included:
Links[edit]
Downloads[edit]
- Big Fat Tank! (86 kB)
- Game map (20 kB)
