Armored Fist is a video game developed and published by Novalogic for the PC. It was followed by Armored Fist 2 and Armored Fist 3.

Armored Fist
Developer(s)NovaLogic
Publisher(s)NovaLogic
Director(s)David Seeholzer
Producer(s)John A. Garcia
Designer(s)John A. Garcia
Stewart Kosoy
David Seeholzer
Programmer(s)David Seeholzer
Composer(s)Jeff Marsh
SeriesArmored Fist
Platform(s)MS-DOS
Release1994
Genre(s)Tank simulator
Mode(s)Single-player

Gameplay

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Armored Fist is a tank simulation and strategy game involving the armed forces of both the United States and the Soviet Union.[1]

Development and release

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Armored Fist was developed by American studio NovaLogic. Produced and designed by the company's head John A. Garcia, development began in 1990. Garcia found that the state of computer technology at the time allowed for more realistic tank warfare such as strategic terrain masking.[2] He explained that the whole team was "keyed into the process" of researching tanks in books, television, and other popular media. "It’s not uncommon to come into work at NovaLogic and have an artist run in with a tape from The Discovery Channel with the first ever recording of a certain tank firing," he said. "The entire staff will analyze it over and over for art perspectives, design ideas, and so forth." The developers even spent a day learning about tanks at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms.[3]

The game originally went by the working title Battlefield 2000 with development overlapping with other NovaLogic projects including the combat helicopter simulator Comanche: Maximum Overkill and the science fiction mech shooter Ultrabots.[4][5][6] The company had planned to release the Armored Fist in mid‐1993 using polygon graphics, but it was delayed when this was substituted with the company's Voxel Space, a raster graphics engine designed by Kyle Freeman. Garcia considered it to the most complex product the team had worked on up to that point, consisting of eight man-years of programming and a quarter million lines of hand-assembled code. He recounted that nearly one man-year of work went into the game's construction set alone, which he opined was as much time as some people spend creating an entire game.[2]

Reception

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Next Generation reviewed the game, rating it four stars out of five, and stated that the game was "Charming cold war fun."[1] Power Play was disappointed by the game's weak overall visual design.[9]

Reviews

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References

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  1. ^ a b c "Finals". Next Generation. No. 2. Imagine Media. February 1995. p. 94.
  2. ^ a b Honeywell, Steve (October 1994). "Ruling with an Armored Fist". Computer Game Review. Vol. 4, no. 3. Sendai Publishing. pp. 112, 114, 116. ISSN 1062-113X.
  3. ^ Sawyer, Ben (April–May 1997). "Skimming the Voxel Surface with NovaLogic's Commanche 3". Game Developer. Vol. 4, no. 2. UBM Technology Group. p. 70. ISSN 1073-922X.
  4. ^ CGW staff (August 1991). "Industry News: Waiting for the Low-End CD". Computer Gaming World. No. 85. Golden Empire Publications. p. 10. ISSN 0744-6667.
  5. ^ Moscowitz, David S. (December 1992). "Inside NovaLogic". VideoGames & Computer Entertainment. No. 47. Larry Flynt Publications. p. 107. ISSN 1059-2938.
  6. ^ CGR staff (March 1992). "Journey to the Center of the Industry: The 1992 Winter Consumer Electronics Show". Computer Game Review. Vol. 1, no. 8. Sendai Publishing. p. 55. ISSN 1062-113X.
  7. ^ McDonald, T. Liam (February 1995). "Armored Fist". PC Gamer US. Archived from the original on November 13, 1999. Retrieved May 26, 2019.
  8. ^ Mooney, Shane (March 1995). "Armored Fist". Electronic Entertainment. Archived from the original on October 18, 1996. Retrieved May 26, 2019.
  9. ^ "Kultboy.com - DIE Kult-Seite über die alten Spiele-Magazine und Retro-Games!". www.kultboy.com. Retrieved 2018-04-23.
  10. ^ "Armored Fist - PC Review - Coming Soon Magazine".
  11. ^ "MBnet Pelihalli". Archived from the original on 2005-01-23.
  12. ^ "Vide Poche". download.abandonware.org. Retrieved October 11, 2024.
  13. ^ "Kultboy.com - DIE Kult-Seite über die alten Spiele-Magazine und Retro-Games!". www.kultboy.com. Retrieved 2024-10-11.
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