Tank! Tank! Tank! - Wii U

I was surprised as anyone else that Tank! Tank! Tank! was as big of a hit as it was at E3 this year. What’s funny though is that people were getting excited about a product that’s close to three years old.

Indeed, though it was announced for and demoed on the Wii U, the real star at the Namco booth were the four Tank! Tank! Tank! arcade machines pitting show-goers against one another in a battle that was too damn shaky for my tastes, but nevertheless awesome.

However, these arcades first debuted in 2009. I guess good fun never really gets old.

The version of the game heading for the WiiU later this year, however, may lack the same panache as its arcade-based counterpart. An extremely simple tank combat game, Tank! Tank! Tank! for the WiiU allows players to control the direction and acceleration of their tank, along with the gun. And that’s about it. I saw two game modes: a deathmatch mode and one where I was tasked with killing robotic spiders infesting the city.

Though the deathmatch mode was fairly awesome and the specialty weapons were pretty cool, the appeal wore off quickly. The spider game mode was sort of weird in that the spiders crawled all over buildings, but you only have control of the x-axis.

The y-axis is controlled by a semi-functional auto-aim. Perhaps most disappointing is the fact that the game fails to use any of the potentially neat features of the WiiU. To be honoest, the game is simple enough to play on a Game Boy Color.

If you can find an arcade or bar with Tank! Tank! Tank!, play it. Drop everything else, and play it. But if you’re holding out for it on the WiiU, you might want to curb your enthusiasm until more is revealed.