Other similar games were released we had a ‘tail gunner’ don’t think it was an Atari game but vector b/w around 1981 as it was same Easter that my eldest daughter was born, and we already had space invaders of course! …. How spoiled the kids of today are when you look at modern tech games just 50 years ago we all piled money into ‘pong’ and ‘breakout’ in monochrome before colour!
Only time I saw a tail gunner cab was in one of those seaside arcades that appears in the blink of an eye (not literally). An arcade opened up that was 3 minutes walk away from my old house in the early 80s. It was full of older cabs and older pins such as 'Playboy'. Tail gunner was one cab, but unfortunately the controls didn't work properly. From what I remember the arcade didn't last more than a few months and it was about as dodgy an arcade as I ever remembered. No change booth, no idea who was running the show, just a shop / back store room full of cabs / pins mostly faulty and very dark as the shop windows were boarded up or blacked out. As a kid there was nothing more exciting for me and my mates than a new arcade opening but on the flip side nothing more disappointing than it failing.
First time I saw Battlezone was at the pavilion arcade in Eirias Park, Colwyn Bay. Tiny arcade about 8 feet wide and 20 feet long, with an air hockey table, various gamblers against the length of the wall and right at the end of a row of machines a huge (to me at the time) Battlezone machine. Loved that arcade as a kid even though my only interests in it were the air hockey table and Battlezone but the park Pavilion is long gone and now a car park.
