Battlezone 2000

I can understand why Atari felt this game was too complex to be released in its natural form. Firstly, there are 2000 levels to choose from with 14 different terrains. Most of them look alike, with only some unique sprites, backgrounds and palette changes, but all have different effects on your tank.

After choosing your terrain, you literally must build your tank from scratch. You pick the drive train, motor, weapons, and radar and actually place them in special areas located on the outer part of the screen. Thankfully, this process can be made easier by using one of the 6 pre-built tanks. I prefer to ride in the Madonna, while others might like the Borrg. (Such original names, huh?)

After the tank is built, you jump right into the battle zone. Moving around is pretty basic but picking up items can be a little tricky. You must first press OPTION 1, move the cursor over the object, then press OPTION 2. After that, you have to find a place to put it. Sometimes, you just don't have room for more stuff in your tank and have to leave it behind.

And, if that's not enough, each item must be activated! Probably the most useful item would be the scanner which is overlaid on the main screen much like the map from ALIEN vs. Predator. After I activated it, these little black dots appeared all over the screen and I thought there was something wrong with my Lynx!

Your goal in this game is the same as the original BattleZone. Destroy the tanks. (Or in this case, the eyeballs, the jumpy things, and other weird monsters.) It takes quite a while before you can find and kill all the baddies so you can move on to the next level. And that can also be hard if you run out of ammo! Thankfully, if you get bored you can always reset the Lynx. That will get you out of the level your on but keep all your found items.

One of the first things I do is turn off the music. It's annoying and repetitive. The sound effects are the exact same as the ones from BattleZone Plus (what I call the game you play without using the cheat). They're pretty basic, but the shot sound effect is very satisfying.

It will take weeks, if not months, to complete this game. Regardless of the time requirements, I would recommend it to all Lynx owners. Plus mode will please the quick-fix action seekers, and 2000 appeals to the more strategy oriented. Atari was definitely wrong thinking no one would like 2000 mode. Heck, it's automatic for me to go through that cheat each time I power up this game!! Thanks to Handmade Software, Lynx owners have another unique game to rub in the noses of our mainstream friends!

It's not an easy task to get this cheat to work with the Handy emulator. But, I did manage to figure it out and afterwards, I made it a breeze for YOU to play this game. Now, by downloading this file, you agree that you already own a copy of BattleZone 2000 for the Lynx... If you download the bz2000.lss file, unzip it and then open it with Handy, you'll be able to play this great game without all that frustration. Have fun!