"The Mother of all games!"

I was but a child when I received my first computer as a present, and at the time Dos was all the rage. I wasn't old enough to appreciate the technology, but I sure loved playing some of the great games like Pac-Man, Zany golf and my favorite, Scorched Earth. I wasn't sure what I was doing when playing the game, nor did I ever really accumulate any sort of winning record, but I loved seeing my tank blow things up.

Scorched Earth is a simple game. You and up to nine other players, human or computer controlled, try to make the others go BOOM! You do this by setting your Power, which ranges from 0 to 1,000, and your angle to whatever increments that you believe will send your Baby Missiles to your opponent's tanks. After firing, everyone else takes a shot, and the cycle repeats until only a single tank remains. Of course, everything isn't this simple. Wind changes, and putting very little power into a shot could blow the missile right back in your face. Terrain also changes as the stage continues. A missile that misses its target doesn't just go to waste; it makes its mark on the land by removing it.

In between stages, you're allowed to purchase weaponry and equipment with the money you've earned in the previous stages. Destroying tanks and being the final tank on the stage both net you money. Your basic weapon is the Baby Missile, which you have an unlimited amount of, but it's also one of the least effective. You can upgrade to Nukes, take a more aggressive path with Death's Heads, which are multiple nukes in a single shot, or try and win without conventional explosives. You can burn the opposing tanks, you can wipe the land out that they're standing on, causing them to fall to their deaths, or you can just create your own land and stick them away in a corner until you're ready to deal with them. There are a total of 32 weapons to buy between stages, and destroying your friends with each and every one of them is great fun.

Unless you're going up against tanks set to the dumbest difficulty setting there is, you'll also have to take defensive measures. If you want to survive even a few rounds against the higher artificial intelligences, shields are a must. Shields can absorb damage caused by enemy weaponry, or deflect them. Another important piece of equipment that you'll constantly be stocked with is parachutes. It's common for enemies on lower terrain to just blow the mountain out from under you, but parachutes allow you to float safely to the ground, and resume combat from your new position.

And this brings us to the most important piece of equipment, guidance systems. Using guidance systems makes up for your complete lack of mathematical skills. Struggling to successfully target a tank in violently high winds? Use heat guidance and watch your missile head straight towards that enemy tank once it gets in a reasonable range. Don't even want to get close? You just want to fire and win? Lazy boy. Seriously, Lazy boys. Use one of these, and you've got a 99% chance of hitting your target, unless another tank gets in the way. Oh well, either way you take out a tank and rack in money, which is then used to furnish your tank with more Lazy boys. It's a sickening cycle of destruction that will leave your friends in a frenzy, so be careful.

Scorched Earth doesn't just repeat the exact same game each time, as it has many intricacies beyond its simple exterior. There can be up to ten players with varying difficulties and up to 1,000 stages in each game. You can set how much money you start the game with as well as interest rates on unspent money between rounds, as well as enabling a free market so weapons cost more or less, depending on whether or not they're a popular purchase. There's a multitude of options available, such as changing the lay of the land, setting the effects the walls have on your weaponry and setting maximum winds and gravity. There are so many options that you should be able to create new games each time through.

There isn't any music in Scorched Earth, and the sound effects are few and far between. You'll get some blips and bleeps, as well as a sound similar to what you hear when you hold down a bunch of buttons on your keyboard for too long. Explosions emit a similar sound, but with less screech in it. There are three sound options in the game for weaponry. The first raises and lowers the sound based on the current height of your missile, the second for the current velocity, and the third removes sound. The third really is the best option.

VGA graphics are used, which means you might have to change your settings just to play the game. I usually run True Color 32 bit, but I had to downgrade to 256 Colors, or the game crashed. In fact, if you fire a Funky Bomb at some point, odds are every color available in the game can be seen in the explosion. When choosing difficulties, you can also choose between a few different models for your tank, but other than the one that's locked to people using the Shareware version, which is probably what you're running, there's no difference outside of size.

Playing on harder difficulties will definitely give you a run for your money; literally, as enemies can pick you off before your second turn even comes around. If you don't utilize shields, parachutes and guidance systems, you're all but dead, and even then you might not win, as no shield is strong enough to take a full set of missiles via a Death's Head. On the other hand, setting the artificial intelligence to the lower side of the spectrum will give you enemies that, even if their shots end up coming close to you, they'll continue to fire willy-nilly.

There's an unlimited amount of replay value in Scorched Earth, with stages taking anywhere between thirty seconds and ten minutes, and being able to set up to 1,000 stages each play through. You can set computers to not buy weapons, you can change the way money is awarded, the order of play can be manipulated as well as numerous other oddities. If you're playing with friends, you can form your own alliances, although there's nothing in the game forcing you to obey said alliances. Essentially, the game will remain fresh until you just get bored of playing it, which, although sounding somewhat redundant, makes perfect sense. To me, at least.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/12/05