Dem Dar Tanks

Well I already talked to Eric about this but I shall enlighten the rest of you. While I was cruising around the Haight-Ashbury area I ran across a store that was selling those tanks. At $80 a pop I could not throw down. Just not enough flow at the moment. But... I did get a chance to play with one and talk to sales person about it. The controls were your basic two stick setup with a Fwd/Rev stick on the left and a Lt/Rt stick on the right. Two triggers were on the front of the controller much like the PS2 L1/R1 buttons, in fact the whole control was a bit playstationesque but blockier and larger. One button was the fire trigger and the other I am not sure what it does. There were also several buttons on the top of the controller which I did not mess with. The sales person did use them to configure the Frequency (Each can be configured with one of four set frequencies). I imagine there is also a reset counter for armor/shots remaining. The two types of Tanks available are a Russian T-34 and a German Panzer. The T-34 has more armor than the Panzer, but carries a payload of only 20 shells. The Panzer has 25. Appearently as you get hit more, your tank slows down. When you fire the tank recoils about 1/2 an inch. The instructions and the controllers are in Japanese, but the the store has a website with translations. As far as the tanks movement goes, they are quite easy to control except if you want to make a narrow degree turn (Approx 15 degrees or less) it can be difficult to get it to turn such an acute angle. Otherwise the controls are quite good. The tanks seem quite good at negotiating terrain and the treads are really cool. I would love to get one of these on a minitures board with terrain-speed-to-endor. Unfortunatly only one tank was charged so I did not get a chance to engage in combat and judge the combat action.

Tanks: B+ (If the price were right I would give it an A-, A if the acute angle turning was better) Obviously not a complete review without a battle field test.

Ja -el: I will need to call you and go over transportation options with you.

Bortz!