Vector Tanks drives out onto the iPhone

We took an exclusive look at Vector Tanks from Chillingo last week just as the game was going into the App Store submissions mangle, and we’re delighted to see it’s now gone live.

The retro-esque, vector drawn beauty borrows quite heavily from the beloved coin-op Battlezone, which isn’t entirely surprising seeing as it’s been put together by programmer extraordinaire and classic arcade authority Peter Hirschberg, who has contributed to the MAME project and also coded the arcade vector emulator, Vector Dream. If you didn’t check it out last week, take a look at his home arcade, then cry into your cornflakes.

Battlezone boasted dual analogue controls (quite prophetic for a game built in 1980) but the iPhone makes up the difference – and more – with similar touch controls on either side of the screen as you fight it out, vector style, on the line-drawn battlefield.

Here’s another gameplay video, and you can swing by the App Store for a closer look by hitting the ‘Buy It!’ button.

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