The Battlezone Rebellion

WE CHAT TO REBELLION’S JASON KINGSLEY ABOUT ACQUIRING BATTLEZONE, AND WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS FOR THE FRANCHISE

What are your earlist memories of encountering Battlezone?

I remember the stand-up cabinet, where you had to put your head against the fixed periscope. In the pandemic world, you wouldn’t want to do that, of course, but back in those days, you didn’t think about everybody else’s sweaty heads that had been pressed up against the viewfinder. And I remember being amazed by the vector graphics, and how utterly useless I was at the game. But you weren’t playing an abstract cartoon – you were drawn into the landscape, the glowing neon nature of things, it was quite remarkable.

What do you think made Battlezone so special?

n It was so unique, properly unusual in its presentation and [had] a unique world to explore. I always felt that there must be more landscape to explore, and there were various rumours about how you could get to the volcano – which, of course, we played on in our virtual reality version of

Battlezone. Can you tell us about that and why you acquired the Battlezone IP?

n We have always liked heritage IP. So when we learned that it was available, we thought we had to at least try to get it as it was an interesting thing to build on. It’s one of the ancestors of the computer games industry, and it was a first in so many ways and so bold an idea we thought it ought to be part of our catalogue. And it was good timing: the opportunity to be a launch title for PS VR came along not long after and we thought, ‘That’s perfect.’ The original

Battlezone was a VR game, except it wasn’t on a headset and was limited by the technology of the time. But they did an incredible job. We had a few false starts [with the VR] and a few experiments that went wrong, but then everybody was learning about VR back then. It was a new place to make games in.

You must love the sequels too, considering the Rebellion Redux games?

n Yes, absolutely. It was arguably quite an offshoot – it went in a different direction than a first-person shooter, but it was beloved by a generation of gamers. Some of them get confused when we talk about Battlezone – they forget that there is the arcade machine where it all came from.

What lies in the future for Battlezone?

n We’ll be doing more in due course, but when and how I don’t know. The VR experience is still active, still drawing in players and viewers, so that’s exciting. We haven’t made any decisions, but we will be doing something more with it in the future, for sure.