That new identity was unfortunately too bold.īattlezone: Combat Commander – evolving since 1999 Activision had a fairly limited license from Atari they wanted to make more sequels but couldn’t do that with the Battlezone name, so they wanted Battlezone III to create a bold new identity and a new name for them to carry forwards (which would have been Combat Commander 2, not Battlezone III). Battlezone II got the magazine spots but not the bundle deals, and despite the involvement of a nearly 50-strong focus group of Battlezone fans it was just too different from the original. GC: What would you have changed about the original release and why do you not think it was successful? Was the game too complicated for casual gamers and do you think there was any way this could have been avoided?ĪH: Activision’s first Battlezone game mostly got where it was thanks to reviews praising its originality and a massive number of bundle deals with hardware. Battlezone II was like a perfect combination of the two and I loved it. The only real serious game among them was a tank shooter called Recoil, which I loved, and Red Alert 2, which 12-year-old me thought was way too hard. I was barely a gamer at all when I first got into Battlezone Flash games on the web aside, the only games I’d played were the ones bundled with my parents’ PC. Unfortunately, by the time I had the game working Tom had lost his copy, so we never did get to play together. I played through the campaign so much that at one point I’m pretty sure I’d have been able to recite the opening monologue word for word if I’d been asked. I never got it to work and forgot about it until I grabbed a box copy from a record shop about six months later. I played the game only very briefly – more roamed around the multiplayer maps, really – but he gave me a copy of the CD so we could play it online together. My new friend Tom invited me over to his place, we played video games for a few hours, and he showed me a bundle of sci-fi games he’d bought called the Future War Collection. GC: Did you play the original Pandemic Battlezone when it was first released, and what were your initial impressions of it? What attracted you to the game and what kept you playing?ĪH: I was first introduced to Battlezone II when I started secondary school in 2004. So here’s hoping his dreams of a Battlezone III come true… Hadley was already the manager of the Battlezone Wiki, and we were given a chance to conduct a quick email interview with him, which shows that even the most seemingly obscure game can have a passionate and productive community of fans around it.
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