Tank Wars (1990)

Tank Wars was made in 1990 by Kenny Morse, a year before Scorched Earth, and was quite popular at that time; yet, surprisingly, not so many people today know that this game appeared before Scorched Earth, and hence Scorched Earth was inspired by Tank Wars (not the other way). Tank wars version 1.x and 2.x were released before any version of Scorched Earth was released. There is also a similar game on the Commodore Amiga computer system called Scorched Tanks, written by Micheal Welch. The things that stand out in this game compared to Scorched Earth is that Mr. Stupid is funnier, The Twanger AI when bouncing walls are turned on, the sound effect of the nukes, and the colorful backgrounds that also animate/move in newer 2.5x and later versions.

Tank Wars is 320x240 256 colors only. It prefers 286 and 386 computers and is playable on 486 and slow pentium computers. Versions 2.0 and 2.5 seem to be optimized for the 286 PS/2 computers that were handed out to schools like crazy in 1988-1991. Versions 3.0 and 3.2 are optimized for slower 386 machines. Tank Wars DOES run under Windows XP, but the keyboard controls are unplayably fast and their are graphic glitches that prevent you from seeing your angle/power settings. Try running it under the DOSBox DOS-PC Emulator.