There were two ways to react to news of Rebellion’s VR reboot of Battlezone, the Atari wireframe classic. The first was to go: huh, fair play. And the second was to worry wistfully about the legacy of Battlezone’s last reboot – the ‘90s first-person RTS from Activision.
“We’ve read your comments, articles, emails and posts and we’ve seen your love for these games – so we wanted to make another brief announcement,” wrote Rebellion in an open letter yesterday.
“We’re very pleased to reveal that we’re also working on a remaster of the 1998 Battlezone for PC.”
Rebellion’s own Battlezone reboot is a deliberately straightforward play on Atari’s original – casting players as the “cockpit of a super weapon”. Activision’s version was very different: coupling its tank simulation with resource-gathering and control of other vehicles.
“We know that a number of you are fans of the 1998 and 1999 Battlezone games released by Activision that re-imagined the franchise as a groundbreaking hybrid of FPS and RTS gameplay,” said Rebellion.
“Naturally when we made our announcement last week some of you asked, ‘But what about the newer Battlezone games? What are you doing with them?’.”
What Rebellion are doing is a remastering of that first Activision Battlezone. It’s “early days”, but the Sniper Elite studio plan to show their working as soon as possible.
“All we can say for now is that whichever vision of Battlezone you love, you’ve not been forgotten!”, they finished.
Is there a particular Battlezone you’re fond of?