More destructive than The Terminator. More firepower than Robocop. Move over boys, there's a new kid in town. His name; Michael Welch. Never heard of him? YOU WILL. He's about to hit the Amiga community head-on and armed to the teeth. His preferred weapon; SCORCHED TANKS. A new Amiga game with enough "Booms", "Blasts" and "Bangs" to make "Die Hard" look like "The Sound Of Music".

Scorched Tanks is an armored tank game fully muzzle-loaded with action, but has a solid strategy base underneath. Any combination of 3 types of competitors can play. Any of the 2 to 4 players may be HUMAN, ROBOTIC, or CYBORG. Robotic and Cyborg players are both computer controlled, but each plays a different type of game. The Robotic tanks are basically simps and play with the IQ of Rice Krispies, sheetrock or a light tossed salad. These are good to practice against when new to the game. The Cyborgs on the other hand play a very aggressive game and can be very nasty indeed. After choosing the number of players, you then select either a 3, 5 or 10 round game.

Next up, any human players must purchase weapons. This is where some strategy must be employed. Players start out with 15,000 dollars to spend in the big "shopping mall" of destructive toys. This is plenty of money for buying lots of wimpy stuff, but remember, the bigger the BANG- the bigger the BUCKS. There are 11 different shield options and 40 (count em) assorted weapons to choose from. Some weapons cause simple blasts, some rip out massive chunks 'o land. There are homing missiles and laser beams, land cruisers and dirt clod throwers, and even burrowing weapons (aptly named WEASELS and GROUNDHOGS) that tunnel under your tank and work it over from below. As far as shields go, some simply reflect shots and one actually neutralizes the weapon and places it in YOUR weapon inventory (too cool!). Choose carefully kids, because once you click on "done", you can pout, scream and kick furniture all you want, but you can't go back. Having selected your goodies, you now enter the game arena proper. You're armed and dangerous. You're cocked, locked and ready to rock!

Welcome to the game arena proper. Each tank now plays in turn. The object is very simple: Destroy everyone else! But don't forget they're out to pummel and pound you also! For each round the terrain is different, some are flat, some are hilly. You never quite know just what you're going to get (at this point you may be cursing your weapons selection). Now to take action! Select a weapon from your assorted arsenal of nasties, find some poor, unsuspecting slob on the scanner, set your turret angle and the amount of power behind your shot and LET 'ER RIP! Watch on as your nukes, missiles and bombs tear whole hillsides out of the earth and destroy your opponent's shields and eventually, your opponents. Blow a crater or three under a tank and watch it fall to it's doom (unless they purchased parachutes). In the immortal words of the late Graham Chapman; "Notice, they do not so much fly, as plummet." Aside from extending YOUR life, each hit on an enemy tank scores you cash bonuses to spend in future weapon purchasing rounds. As in the real world, ya gots ta have cash if ya wants ta stay alive.

The round ends when only 1 tank is left intact on the pitted and torn battlefield. Each player gets a cash bonus depending on their "placement" in the round. Now, back to the store! If you did lousy, you will have to pinch your pennies to stay alive in the next round. Will you buy lots of shields and cower against the onslaught with tears coarsing down your face? Or will you buy 1 beefy weapon and go down fighting, shouting barbaric battle cries and cackling like a madman? On the other hand, if you did good, you can now afford the mondo-destructo toys. But don't forget, your enemies are scarfin' up this stuff too (although the moronic robotic tanks seem to be saving their pennies for a rainy day.) Choose wisely Young Grasshopper, because it's on to the next round of the war for you. And so the game is played out until one player emerges as the victor.

The game also has a nice "options" screen which allows the user to customize the game to their devious little likings. You may add different degrees of wind and gravity into the game for extra tough challenges. Like lots of hills and cliffs? Here's the place to program them to your preference. Order of turns can also be changed here with the glorious winner (or pathetic loser) of each round going first, or you can set this to random and let the chips (nukes) fall where they may. You may even set the amount of interest you get on your acquired cash (bet you wish you could do that for real, Huh?).

Scorched Tanks is loosely based on an MS-DOS (phooey) game called "Scorched Earth", which I've never seen (OK by me). It is supposed to run on any Amiga. I have been running it on my A500 and it has given me no problems. Since I only have 1/2 MEG of chip RAM (Sniff...Sob...Weep), Scorched automatically boots into a "1/2 MEG friendly" mode (Thank you Mr. Welch, there should be 100 more of you). I have run it under both 1.3 and 2.1 and the game works well on both. Scorched Tanks was created using AMOS pro and AMOS pro compiler and show just how powerful they are in the hands of an extremely talented individual. Mr Welch's game has been mentioned twice in AMIGA WORLD magazine and has been called one of the BEST of 1993. I have spoken to Mike a few times and he is extremely humble about his game with no severe swelling of the cranium that I've noticed. He seems to be content just knowing the game is being played and that his work is getting noticed (there should be 500 more of you Mike). He asks a shareware fee of 10 dollars which is a bargain (I've paid 4 times that for commercial games that Scorched Tanks can squish effortlessly under it's thumb without breaking a sweat).

If you haven't caught on by now, I like Scorched Tanks....ALOT!! Mr. Welch has given us a MONSTER of a game. It is very easy to learn and get started, yet challenging enough to keep you playing blurry-eyed into the wee hours, shaking your sweating fists in excitement. Copy this one onto an Asbestos- coated floppy, because this game is blisteringly HOT! SCORCHED TANKS is sure to "burn" it's way into Amiga hall of fame. There, my review is complete, "tanks" for reading (groan). Any guesses as to what I'm gonna go play now?

Dr. Torgo