If Atari could deliver a prototype, the think tank acting as an intermediary between Atari and the US Army, would then pitch the simulator, and if successful, this would lead to a large order of completed games. The M2 “Bradley” Infantry Fighting Vehicle The development team working on the simulator were divided in their commitment to the project, and Atari’s management were far from forthcoming with details of the arrangement. The story goes that after the release of Battlezone, a think tank made up of a group of retired Army officers, approached Atari with a proposition could Atari adapt the Battlezone code to make it suitable for training new recruits? Specifically those who would be stationed within an Infantry Fighting Vehicle (later renamed the Bradley Fighting Vehicle after Omar Bradley, a distinguished Army General who died in 1981). Shrouded in secrecy at the time, the project was certainly not business as usual for Atari, but clearly represented a large potential income stream that they wanted to pursue, and at some point in the future exploit to its maximum. Much of the detail of this story is vague, part in view of its very nature, and until very recently much of the tale was regarded as folklore rather than fact. This is how the idea for what would become Bradley Trainer was born.
The US Army was very interested in exploring ways in which new recruits could potentially be trained in a safe environment at a fraction of the cost. Training soldiers was an expensive business, especially using live rounds which in some cases would cost several thousand dollars apiece. This added to the illusion of actually being inside a tank: Atari’s Battlezone Upright CabinetĪn unexpected by-product of the game’s release was interest from the military. Here, the final upright version of the cabinet included a periscope style interface that players looked through to play the game. Around 15,000 machines were rolled out of Atari’s factory in both upright and cabaret form. This first-person wire frame vector shoot-em-up, puts the player at the controls of a tank wandering the wilderness of a futuristic-looking battlefield, shooting down enemy tanks, UFOs and missiles. Atari’s Battlezone arcade game released in 1981 was an immediate classic.
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