Front Line

Released: 1983

Pitch: With gun and grenades in your hand, jump into a tank and assault the enemy fort!

My experience with the earlier arcade games in these Taito collections have not been real great on the whole, so I wasn't expecting a lot from this game from 1983 and my first try ended with some pretty quick deaths and a game over. But! I'm glad I gave it a second try. Front Line is basically a proto-twin stick shooter: left stick to move, right to aim. You can shoot your gun and throw grenades, both of which seem to have unlimited ammo, thankfully. You start out on foot and your little man is surprisingly agile, but there is a delay between your shots, so you have to time your shots rather than spam the fire button. Once you get maybe a third of the way through the level you find the first tank you can jump in. There are two sizes of tanks and their shots correspond with whether they are bigger or smaller. You can't damage tanks with your gun but you can with grenades, so you're not helpless outside a tank. And if your tank becomes fatally damaged, you have a chance to leap out before it explodes. On my second try playing I made it all the way to the end of the level and destroyed the enemy fort...and it was a harrowing, intense experience! I lost multiple tanks but kept barely surviving. It was really fun! Definitely give this one a try if you get the chance but in my experience, it shines brightest on the second try.

The collection says this is from '83 but the video says '82. Can I be bothered to actually look it up? No.