Combat

What Combat is like to play

Combat is a duel where geometry shoots back. You rumble through a walled arena against AI tanks, and every shell - Yours and theirs - bounces once off a wall before it dies. That single ricochet changes everything: corners stop being cover, straight fights become bank shots, and the deadliest angle in the room is usually the one nobody is facing. The enemy tanks are no pushovers either; they lead their shots, aiming at where you are going instead of where you are, so driving in straight lines is volunteering. Matches run in rounds - Clear the arena, then a fresh layout with sharper opponents rolls in. It is slow, deliberate, sudden-death chess with engines. Our version rolls a new arena layout for every round, saves your best round streak, and adds clean touch controls with a virtual stick and fire button, so you can bank a winning shot from a keyboard or a couch.

Combat at a glance

Where Combat came from

Tank rolled into arcades in November 1974 from Kee Games - Officially an Atari competitor, secretly its subsidiary. Designed by Steve Bristow, it put two players in a maze with twin-stick tank controls and mines between them, and it became a phenomenon: one of the first arcade games to store its graphics in ROM chips, and a hit so large it helped fold Kee Games back into Atari and set the company up for its next era.

In 1977 the formula went home. Combat, built by Joe Decuir and Larry Wagner from the DNA of Tank and Atari's Jet games, shipped as the pack-in launch cartridge for the Atari 2600 - For millions of households, the first videogame they ever played was a tank duel. Its 27 variations included the beloved Tank Pong modes, where shells bounced off walls and the winning shot was usually a bank shot, plus invisible-tank modes that turned the ricochet into sonar.

The ricochet duel never stopped echoing - Through Atari's vector Battlezone, console classics, and modern party hits built entirely around bouncing shells in tiny arenas. Combat brings the lineage to the browser: walled mazes, one-bounce ricochets, AI opponents that lead their shots, and round-based escalation, with a new arena every round and a saved best streak standing in for a second joystick and a rec-room rivalry.

Ways people play Combat

Kee Games Tank

The 1974 original: two players, twin-stick controls, a mined maze, and the arcade hit that helped build Atari's empire.

Combat's Tank Pong

The 1977 Atari 2600 modes where shells bounce off walls - Including versions with invisible tanks that only appear when firing.

Battlezone

Atari's 1980 vector classic moved the tank duel into first-person 3D wireframe, complete with a periscope viewfinder cabinet.

Modern arena tank battlers

Party games and browser hits that pack several tanks into tiny mazes with ricochet fire - Proof the 1974 duel still detonates.

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