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According to popular belief, Battlezone programmer Ed Rotberg left Atari after he was forced to convert it into this Army training simulation.
Information from MAMEWorld:
The gameplay is very much a simulation. The other tanks do not fire at you, and the only way to end the game is to run out of ammo or shoot a 'friendly' tank or helicopter.
The Turret is controlled by a 'Star Wars' style yolk controller. It turns the guns and lets you change the elevation of the gun. There are a set of foot pedals that control the actual movement of the tank. There are 3 type of weapons
25mm cannon (Chain-gun) ;
7.62 mm coaxially mounted machine gun;
TOW missile launcher with twin tubes.
The upper left of the bezel hold the Range control, and also the magnification switch. The range control sets the height of the gun before you launch rockets or shoot the machine gun. The magnification switch changes your view from 3x to 10x.
On the right side of the bezel, there is a switch for arming the TOW missiles. Once you fire these missiles, you can guide them with the 'laser' sights. You can steer the missile into targets, or into the ground if you overshoot the target.
At the lower right near the yolk, are 7 buttons for selecting the 'AP' (armor piercing) rounds, or the 'HE' High Explosive rounds. You also have the choice of 'SS' single Shot or 'CF' Continuous Fire modes. You can also switch to the '7.62mm' machine gun also.
It usually takes one hit from a TOW missile, 5 from the rockets/shells, or 10-20 from a machine gun to bring down an enemy. Some tanks can only be shot with the TOW missile. The helicopter is the most difficult target to destroy.
NO SCHEMATICS came with the board. (I have never seen any schematics for any proto, as the schematics are the last thing completed when a game goes into production).
The board is basically a standard Battlezone board with a wirewrap add on board for all the additional inputs. It features a D/A converter for input from the yolk and the Range controls.
In order to convert a Battlezone, you would have to add a Star Wars controller with two independent sets of triggers on the front side, a buttload of wire jumpers, an I/O board with a D/A converter, a ROM daughter card, 11 buttons, 3 pots, two pedals, and a bunch of cabinet wiring. The wirewrap board has a zillion traces that go to the AVG board. The Mathbox proms, seems to be stock and have production part numbers on them.
I'm not sure why there are a set of handles screwed to the side of the cabinet. It seems like they wanted an easy way to move it around, but they drilled holes right through the sideart. There are reinforcement plates behind the handles.
The ROMS are dumped and safe.
Note from Bobby:
This unit is also where the Star Wars flight yoke originated from. These
controls are faithful to the real controls of a Bradley Tank. After
Star Wars, the controls showed up in Empire Strikes Back, Return
of the Jedi, The Last Starfighter,
Firefox, and STUN Runner.