Long before Takara developed their 2002 mixed-reviews tank sim, Epic Megagames was distributing Seek and Destroy, a PC action game that combined tank and chopper elements.
I first encountered Seek and Destroy in the July, 1996 issue of Interactive Entertainment (IE), the CD portion of Computer Games Strategy Plus magazine (previously called Strategy Plus, then called Computer Games, now sorta out of business, but it’s coming back.).
This CD was stacked — also including playable demos and shareware of Duke Nukem 3D, Zork Nemesis, Afterlife, Normality, Decathlon and Battle Arena Toshinden as well as video reviews of several games and textual archives of all 24 previous issues of the CD magazine. (It was based, fittingly enough, a CDMag.com)
The guys at IE gave Seek and Destroy a favorable review, and I wholeheartedly agreed.
From the publisher: Seek & Destroy combines elements of Choplifter, Desert Strike, and Return Fire. Pilot a chopper or a tank against hordes of enemies. Not too deep, but lots and lots of fun! This is the SHAREWARE version of the game, not a demo!
From the start, Safari Software — which Epic bought out entirely in 1997 — admits that Seek and Destroy combines elements of other fun, pick-up-and-go games. They weren’t really trying to do much different; you fly around in a chopper or drive around in a tank and shoot the hell out of everything. Sometimes they mix it up by incorporating a demolition expert you have to drop of and pick up or some other subplots, but in the end, Search and Destroy is the kind of game you can just play, and play and play again. The controls are easy, the weapons are massive and there’s plenty to shoot at. There’s no getting lost in a 36-hour developing plot. Start the game, shoot stuff.
Seek and Destroy is still technically available from Epic Classics, but I’m not so sure about the © 2000 on the site…
Here’s IE’s original video review of Seek and Destroy.
Ye Olde System Requirements:
- IBM PC and compatibles
- Minimum: 486, Recommended: 486/66
- 4 MB RAM
- 19 MB (CD version) or 4 MB (disk version) of hard disk space
- Dos game with Windows Installer
Download Seek and Destroy shareware free from Blast Magazine
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