This week's Arcade Archives release is... Vs. Battle City (Namco, 1985)
Preference options allow you to toggle whether sprites that overlay each other show black space or not, and to display the score during gameplay.
Your last mission in defending the pride of our batallion, the eagle flag, went so well- with you taking out many an enemy tank, and destroying many an obstructing wall- that you've caught the attention of the top brass back at HQ. You might remember in your debriefing that last time, you had to do this alone and with no outside assistance, but fear not, HQ has your back. Your mission to defend the flag from wave upon wave of enemy tanks will continue, but now you can bring a second player into the fight for co-op defensive action and also pick up power-ups like shields, screen-clearing grenades and even tank upgrades that eventually let you destroy the otherwise-impenetrable steel walls. It's a good thing too, as your battle is much more complicated this time- new types of enemy tanks and terrain like vision-obscuring forests and impassable lakes are now dotted around the battlefield. Protect that flag, soldier, at all costs!
We're back to the Vs. System games frrom Namco, and this one's a pretty famous Famicom title, albeit one probably better known in the West for being endlessly cloned and pirated on various multicarts and bootleg systems. It's to Tank Batallion what Warpman is to Warp & Warp, a game inspired by its arcade predecessor but massively expanded with different terrain and power-ups. This completes the tank action trilogy of Tank Batallion, Battle City and Tank Force on Arcade Archives, which is nice! Still, the original Famicom version is also available in Namco Museum Archives Vol. 2, and that version features a level creator obviously missing from the arcade version, but there are differences in the level order and what appear to be exclusive levels in this Vs. System version like the one based on Mappy. Maybe check out the level select option (see the ACA manual for details) to see them all!
... Two more Arcade Archives posts remain before the end of Cohost.