TANK II ARCADE GAME FOR SALE

[atarigirlII]

 

TANK II ARCADE GAME FOR SALE

 

Made by ATARI, INC.

MODEL No. SA033-001

SN TA=II-2595

AMPS 2.0

PATENT No. 3793483

100-130 Volts

50/60 Cycles

 

I have had my TANK II for a lot of years and have decided to sell it. I raised my three sons on it and they loved it! AND, of course, it was the beginning of their Atari days! I am selling it "as is." It works, but I think the right tank is a little sluggish although that may have been because I was trying to play both tanks at the same time and take pictures. It certainly needs and deserves a good cleaning. Although I could find historical information regarding the arcade game (see below), I could not find any of the games for sale. I phoned a video and arcade game company and they advised me that $400 was a fair price for it. So, I am asking $400 OBO. The game is located in northeast Pennsylvania at 18960. It would be at your expense to pick up the game and transport it, although I would help in any way that I could.

 

I have many pictures, but have not been able to upload them. Please let me know if you would like me to email pictures to you at your email address.

 

AtarigirlII

 

Historical Background

 

Tank was the first video arcade game to incorporate Read-Only Memory (ROM) microchips. It was released by Atari Inc. of Sunnyvale, California in 1974. Two years earlier, Atari had released the first successful video arcade game, Pong. The ROM microchips int Tank allowed the game to store much more information, and therefore it has much more advanced graphics than Pong. Tank still does not incorporate a microprocessor chip, which would enable much more sophisticated game play. Atari distributed Tank under the Kee Games name to get around exclusive licensing arrangements common in arcades at the time. Due to the popularity of video games, these arrangements were discontinued and the Kee Games name was not used again.

 

Tank is a 2 player arcade game by Atari Inc subsidiary Kee Games, originally released on November 5, 1974 and designed by Steve Bristow and Lyle Rains. The game is famous for causing such demand that Atari made its "secret" ownership of Kee Games public, merging the company back in to Atari and releasing Tank under the Atari label as well.

 

Tank uses a black and white Motorola television for its display. The control panel consists of 4 military style joysticks, 2 per player, with a fire button mounted on top of the right joystick of each pair.

 

Inserting coins immediately starts the game, placing the players in the upper right and lower left corners of the maze respectively. The first 50 or cabinets produced have a protruding wooden coin box area between the two speaker grills.

 

Tank was the first game to use IC-based ROM to store graphical data.

 

The custom game cabinet was designed by Peter L. Takaichi, and patented Oct. 20, 1975 (US Patent # D243,624).

 

Gameplay

Players move their tanks through a maze on screen, avoiding mines and shooting each other. The players are represented by one black and one white tank sprite, and mines are denoted by an "X". Points are scored by shooting the opponent or when a player runs over a mine, the player with the highest score at the end of the time limit winning the game.

 

The tanks are controlled with the dual joystick configuration. Pushing both joysticks will move the player's tank forward, and pulling them both back causes the tank to stop. Moving the right joystick forward while pulling the left joystick back will cause the tank to turn right, reversing the motion will cause the tank to turn left.