For you older gamers out there, I’m gonna take you back a bit today.
Back in 1980 (four years before even I was born!), Atari released an arcade game called Battlezone that was one of the original popular FPS games. It looked like this:
Almost 2 decades later, in 1998, Activision published their own version of the game, also called Battlezone. This was the version I discovered, and I played that game on my Windows 95 computer all through my teenage years. But then I grew up and forgot all about it.
The interesting thing is, the 1998 game didn’t have any background music, so I put on one of my own albums to play while I gamed. Specifically, Eiffel 65’s album Europop. They were really popular in the late '90s, and that album had just dropped in 1999, when I discovered this game.
Their unique and almost haunting music made a wonderful backdrop for my game. I was harvesting resources and defending bases by myself on the moon, which felt isolating and lonely, especially when you could see the Earth far away in the background. Somehow, the soundtrack I picked just worked really well with it.
Decades later, I heard Eiffel 65’s music and it brought me back to my childhood, playing Battlezone (1998). But I couldn’t remember the name of that game, so I couldn’t look it up. I figured the game probably doesn’t exist anymore and this was just another flicker of a childhood memory that would fade into obscurity as I got older.
A few years ago, though, I bought a copy of Battlezone Gold Edition (2017) on Steam (this time developed and published by Rebellion) and despite looking completely different, it felt somewhat familiar:
That’s when I noticed that there was a Battlezone 98 Redux on Steam, and it was my childhood game!! I was so excited, I immediately dumped Battlezone Gold Edition to go relive my nostalgic past.
That’s the crisp 1920x1080 resolution screenshot in the main post; if I had a screenshot of the original game, it would be fuzzy and probably only 640x480 resolution. The “redux” version cleaned it up and and made it playable on modern 1080p monitors.
Granted, Battlezone Gold Edition is a very fun game to play, and I’ve since gone back and beaten it a few times over. They even have a 2018 sequel called Battlezone: Combat Commander which I own but haven’t played yet. It looks more like a late '90s/early 2000s video game; definitely not a big budget production. Rebellion published it, but handed off development to Big Boat Interactive.
But something about Battlezone 98 Redux really takes me back to my childhood. Of course, I had to pull up some MP3s of Eiffel 65’s Europop album and experience it the right way. 😉
What games take you back to your childhood?
Just a correction: the sequel was released in 1999 as Battlezone 2: Combat Commander. It was a AAA release and picked up the original alternate history storyline 30 years after the events of the first game, with all Earth-based factions now forming an official alliance and fighting a new common threat. It was insanely cool for a teenager back then.
While the sequel was technically far superior, I did miss the cold war tone of US vs Soviet conflict that was present in the first game.
I also loved the interpretation of Greek mythology through the “ancient aliens” lens (Hercules Brigade and all the other stuff, quite along the lines of what Stargate SG1 was doing at the time) that was revealed to you through briefings and pre-mission voiceovers. I think this was also more pronounced in the first game.