We received an email today telling us about RCTiger.com, a German website that lets you move little remote control tanks around a simulated battlefield. While I was quite skeptical at first, once I started the game I was taken aback at the fun I had running little Tiger tanks over miniature trees.
The system isn’t quite foolproof. The game runs from 10pm until midnight Munich time and there is apparently someone in a room watching these things so they don’t tip over or crash. You use the standard keyboard controls – ASDF – and press K to fire at the other tank. When you’re hit the tank shakes around a little and lights up. We received a beta account to try it out and we even recorded a video of our adventure!
Here is a link to the full-sized video of my game.
RCTiger is entirely web-based and the cameras are quite quick and refresh instantly. Best of all you can run into other tanks and walls without suffering much damage and if you get off course a giant hand will pick you up and drag you back to the playing field.I especially liked the weird little room where the tanks start out where the giant – actually a guy named Tony – lives.
Given enough work, I could see this as a very niche gaming experience. I think the limited screen space is holding this game back for now but it was quite a novel experience and loads of fun once you got the hang of it. Sadly, jerks like me will probably spend most of their time trying to push down trees instead of playing the game, but that’s to be expected.
Here’s a video from the other tank’s perspective:
The link is to rtiger.com and it is full of godaddy ads.
Fixed. I also hosted the video off of our server.
This is awesome :)
Yeah, totally awesome…
Broken media link?
From Jing: This content is currently unavailable. Please contact the content owner for more information.
This game is off the hook… It could definitely become a hit. And what an original idea. There should be upgrades for the weapons, however – like nukes :-)
Feh. Jing cut off our bandwidth. I’m trying to figure out what’s up or host this elsewhere.
It is a broken link? where can I find the games?
BZFlag?
Exactly
US$1.50 for a 5 minute game, no thanks, I will stick with my xbox.
Ian, you bad ass you.
here is the video on youtube from the other tanks perspective.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tbMvyfNvBU
Tony you’d better switch to another business model. C’mon 1 euro for 5 minutes of gameplay! What if I get addicted?
You have to treat it a bit like a game at the arcade. Using real tanks doesn’t scale well (i.e. I cannot just have like 1000s running at the same time… well not yet)..
so pay per use it is…
It is good fun !!! something strangely fun about driving stuff remotely…
Oh God! It reminds me good old Abrams tank simulator!
The charge is too high!!!!
Not worth the price!!!!
There used to be something like this 5 years ago or so called Rescue Robots, they had a corresponding TV show as well (no, not robot wars, this was remote controlled online)