You’ve got your standard shots that basically arc through the air and explode when they hit terrain.

Every iteration, variant, and mechanic you could possibly think of for this type of game seems to have been thought of. I’d think with 400 weapons that eventually they would start to get redundant and repetitive in their behaviors, but I’ve been consistently surprised so far.

Okay, so the variety of weapons is astounding. However, in Pocket Tanks each of you gets ten shots, you get points for hitting your enemies, lose points for hitting yourself, and whoever has the most points at the end of ten turns wins. In most Scorched Earth games the point is to kill your opponent by being the first to make a direct hit. There is an option to have wind, which push your shot when it’s in the air. You control the angle and power of your shot, and in Pocket Tanks you can move your tank. Pocket Tanks is a Scorched Earth style game where you and your opponent have a tank and try to shoot each other. (Apparently it was programmed by one guy, Michael P. Currently, it has a free “lite” version available on mobile devices and there is still PC/Mac shareware versions available at the website. It’s been around for a very long time and it’s still alive and kicking. I remember playing Pocket Tanks maybe 15 years ago on my old iBook. I realized something about how the quantity and variety of weapons affects the very nature of the game. However, with 400 different guns (30-40 in shareware versions) I realized this would be pointless.Īnd I as thought about the quantity of different weapons I realized that the majority of them were not balanced and despite this the game was still fun. As I thought about all the strange and different weapons in the game, I thought I’d make this post a Fun Gun Award and talk about some of the most creative weapons. For whatever reason I started thinking about a game I used to play long, long ago called Pocket Tanks.

Pocket tanks 2