Tank Force


Tank Force is a multi-directional shooter arcade game that was released by Namco in 1991; it was the last game to run on their System 1 hardware, is the sequel to Battle City, which was released six years earlier and is a sequel to Tank Battalion, which had been released five years before it. The game was included as part of the Namco Museum compilation for the Nintendo Switch on July 28, 2017.

Gameplay

The gameplay is very much like that of Tank Battalion, except that this time up to two or four players can play simultaneously, there are seven new types of enemy tanks and there is fifteen types of powerups which appear for players to collect in order to increase their tanks' firepower and boost their score ; each round is also the size of 17x13 blocks instead of just 13x13 off Tank Battalion and Battle City, the enemies also roll into view from the top of the screen instead of just appearing and can also enter from the left and right sides, every fourth round is a "boss" round where the players must fight Train Cannons, AK Tanks and Boss Cannons at the top of the screen as well as the round's regular enemies, the players cannot destroy their own headquarters walls, when one player shoots another they will be pushed back, and the game has an ending which will be seen after clearing all thirty-six rounds. The game's seventeenth round is also made to look like Pac-Man - even though Tōru Iwatani had no involvement with the title.

Reception

In Japan, Game Machine listed Tank Force on their February 1, 1992 issue as being the fourth most-successful table arcade game of the year.
In his review for Namco Museum on the Nintendo Switch, Damien McFerran of Nintendo Life said that Tank Force made for an odd inclusion due to its obscurity, describing it as "Pac-Man with tanks and destructible environments".