Previous Next

Panzadrome was originally out on the Spectrum, but now Amstrad owners can reap the benefits of the extended version of this excellent game. On the island of Panzadrome, a large number of tanks have gone made - your job is to destroy them all!

To do this you have a rather large tank. This has a man chassis, turret/gun unit and wheels, these can be changed at various factories that you can find around the island. These will swap one of these units for a more powerful or different one.

You also have a mortar launcher and a polycrete dispenser. These become important, as you need to destroy the gun turrets that appear from time to time. And sometimes you get a narrow road that is impassable due to a crater caused by the untimely destruction of one of your enemies! Mortars take out guns, and polycrete can patch up holes.

You can also lay mines in the path of the bad guys - but there are mines already around, so you have to watch out for these as well. To aid you in this, there is a mine detector on the left of your instrument panel, but the action is usually so fast that you don't have time to give it more than just a cursory glance.

The rest of the instrument panel is composed of status indicators for ammo and shields. These indicate how much you have left and the damage status of each. When the levels go to zero you run out of ammo, and when the damage indicators turn black you die.

On the right is the island map. This just gives your relative position on the map of the island. The rest of the screen is taken up by the action window. This shows you a plan view of the map square that you are in at the time. You show up as a little tank, about the same proportions as in the original Atari tank game of the late seventies. The enemies also show up as little tanks, but different colours and shapes depending on their viciousness! (Watch out for the red ones!)

The action jumps from screen to screen in a frame-by-frame format. It would have been nice to have had a smooth scroll, but that would have taken too much out of the game and it can be got used to fairly swiftly, though the sluggish way it changes screens can be a bit irritating if you are flicking between two sectors with any rapidity.

The gameplay is very fast and furious. The enemy tanks are very quick off the mark, so you have to be even quicker. Your controls are rotate, move and fire. Similar to the Atari mentioned above (this game is nothing like the old Atari game, but some things never change), and selectors for all the different weapons.

The rotating tank, rotates very quickly - perhaps a bit too quickly, I always seem to overshoot.

The graphics of the island are very good, depite the necessarily 'square' nature of most of the installations. But, there are many interesting things that can be found dotted about, such as the coastal defence guns in the lower left hand corner.

Overall, this is a fun game to play. The graphics are a bit blocky, but are incredibly colourful. The fine detailed graphics of your tank being built are excellent.

The game is fun to play and very difficult, but still playable. Good on you Ram Jam.