Scorched Earth 2000 – Web

meshko

for the 25th anniversary (approximately) I vibecoded what i wanted to do for years -- port of the original remake (yes) to JavaScript. Alive again.

kylemaxwell

I played the hell out of the original DOS game during high school in 1992 (or thereabouts, it's been a while.)

skeeterbug

Oh man, we played this in computer lab in high school to pass time after we were done with our assignments. I believe it was a java/flash version though (year 2000/2001)

ChrisArchitect

A related page: Scorched Earth: The Mother of All Games http://www.whicken.com/scorch/ ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32092060 )

Forgeties79

Hoooooly hell I totally forgot about this. Talk about dredging up some memories. I don’t think I have thought about this game in literally 20 years.

rickcarlino

I did not realize Pocket Tanks was a derivative work.

motgnay

LOL nostalgic

sbinnee

OMG. One of my favorite games. It was fun to explore all the weapons and utilities with my brother.

rhema

9 year old me got my first "hacking" experience out of this game. With the shareware version, you could not select the ultra tank that could shoot 3 bullets for a human, but you COULD if it were the computer player. The "hack": -start a game with a normal tank VS ultra computer player as p2. -save the game (as a file). -open the game file. -read the ASCII text and just flip which player has which text. Now, I had my ultra tank.

nickandbro

Wow! Curious how you did multiplayer over the web? What stack did you use?

GavinAnderegg

Scorched Earth taught me the concept of software versions. It was the first program that I ever knowingly interacted with more than one point-release of. I had version 1.0, but a friend had version 1.2. My very young mind was boggled by the concept of software being updated.

bandrami

I wasted most of my high school years on the OG (1991) version. I love how such a simple concept can make for such a great game

dylan604

Didn't realize that in 2026 people still ran an http only websites

navigate8310

Pocket Tanks was my ultimate childhood game that I played with my classmates during our computer lab lessons. I believe Scorched Earth was it's inspiration

NewLincoln

What was the game like this with apes throwing bananas?

SigmundA

I remember the original Scorched Earth being one of the few games that could actually do SVGA graphics at the time. Most games of the era where 320x240 8 bit 256 colors, I had a 286 with 800x600 SVGA monitor and that game could actually use it although it was only 4 bit 16 color, don't think I ever played the 256 color in the last version.

erickf1

Thank you for this blast from the past.

deepakhj

We used to play the DOS version in AP Computers in HS back in 1994.

AbraKdabra

Holy... the nostalgia, I played the hell out of this game in computer class back in school 25 years ago, time flies.

skirmish

In my first job after graduation in a small company I was talking to the VP of engineering, and he mentioned offhand: "yeah, I wrote Scorch when I was in college". Mind blown.