About

Sure, great works of cinema are great! But aren’t they missing something?! Yes! They’re missing tanks! Move over Orson Welles! Move over Robert DiNiro! These tanks are ready for their close-up! Combat at the Movies features a selection of 10 films from Sight & Sound magazine’s Critics’ top 100, each adapted into the visuals, sounds, and interactions of Atari’s classic tank-fighting game Combat. The featured films are Citizen Kane (1941), Rashomon (1950), Tokyo Story (1953), L’Avventura (1960), Au Hasard Balthazar (1966), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), The Godfather (1972), The Conversation (1974), Taxi Driver (1976), and Beau Travail (1999). In each case, a scene from the movie has been adapted, experimenting with the question of how (and whether) one can convey some of the same ideas and emotions as a film in the highly limited frame of an Atari 2600-era videogame.