Koukyaku Kikou Shidan: Bein Panzer

Joining the strangely growing ranks of Sony's curious first-party release lineup for the PlayStation in Japan is Bein Panzer, a 3D strategy throwback to some of the oldest concepts in tabletop wargaming. Set in an alternate world, it appears to be the creation of some die-hard tank otaku, let loose to create his own unusual armor designs. It's a sort of Space: 1889 vision of World War II, with extra-mobile walking tanks and tilt-rotor aircraft that look like they were designed round about 50 years ago, and powers controlling the inner solar system with a strong visual resemblance to nations like Churchill's England and the Grand Duchy of Zeon. Hey, if it works for them...

The alternate history du jour resembles Konami's Ring of Red just a little bit, if you take its idea and rewind it thirty years or so. Space colonization seems to have preceded the rise of dictatorships in Europe, and so we have multinational warfare between the Earth, the Moon and Mars, fought by tanks with leg-like treads and planes that combine the fuselages of Spitfires, Mustangs, or Messerschmidts with enclosed tilting props that enable vertical takeoff and landing. The tanks, incidentally, are the title characters - "Bein Panzer" means something like "Legged Tank" in German. These weapons descend out of orbital dropships onto the battlefield via something called an "orbital elevator", which can be used to quickly move them about in a pinch.

In the gameplay Kouashi Kikou Shidan: Bein Panzer is the classic strategy game in which the player controls several units that got a limited range of movement. The game is divided into different missions.