Battleship (Elite Systems/Epyx)

Battle Ships is a truly fun conversion! If you like the original game, you will certainly love this! And for those of you who never played Battle Ships, now is your chance to do so! Put on your marine uniform and sink yourself some floating metal!...

What can you add to Battle Ship over the pencil and paper version? A computerised opponent, fairly obviously, as well as the chance to play without using up the earth’s limited paper and pen resources. The possibility of cheating is removed as well. Elite go beyond this by changing the shapes of the ships to be more Tetris style, and allowing these to be placed at each of the 4 main angles. A ‘Salvo Fire’ mode sees each player fire a succession of shots (each of your six ships gets four shots a turn until it’s sunk), meaning that strategic play involves firing on a wide range initially in the hope of finding a ship, before homing in on the area in the next turn. Finally, there’s an animated sequence for each go, which is depicted as an air strike. As well as standard two-player games, there’s also a multi-player mode in which the winner’s score accumulates until he loses, allowing for a “winner stays on” structure if there are 3 or more of you.