Front Line

Frontline Arcade Game

Front Line was released in 1982 by Taito.  It was one of the earliest examples of military-oriented combat, and one of our arcade favorites.  The premise of the game, like Commando, was to make it to the enemy’s fort.  Unlike Commando, however, was the fact that the player could commandeer tanks.  There was a light tank with a machine gun, and a heavy tank that had a single cannon.  The light tank was fast, but easily destroyed.  The heavy tank could take one solid hit from an enemy cannon and survive, but it was slow.  When the heavy tank was damaged, the player could jump out, and then jump back in and carry on.  If the tank is permanently damaged, the player had to jump out before the tank exploded.

At the end of a round, the player had to get out of the tank and proceed on foot to blow up the fort.  The enemy fort was a brick fortified tank that fired mortar rounds at the player.  The player had to lob grenades over the brick wall to destroy the main enemy tank and proceed to the next level.  As levels progressed, enemy combatants become more skillful.

Frontline Arcade Game Cabinet

There were a number of home console versions of this game available, including the Atari 2600, ColecoVision, Commodore 64, and a handful of others.  There was a later version created for the Wii and Nintendo DS.