Magnetik Tank
I came across Magnetik Tank (mind the k) when I got interested in early isometric games. At the time I still thought that the isometric view had developed more or less in the 90s. This isn't true. The isometric view was present pretty much from the beginning of the home computer age. Back then it was usually called 3D and was the default view for action adventures, a genre that was abundant on the 8-bit platforms.
What happened in the 90s was a shift. Out of the action-adventures
developed action-RPGs (the Bitmap Brothers called Cadaver an RPG without the trainspotting element
),
A-Train and later
SimCity 2000 first used the isometric view
for strategy/city builder games, and soon it became the default view
for practically any map-based game for a while, while the action
went 3D.
Back to Magnetik Tank (MGT for short). It is a typical example of such an 80s action-adventure, you drive a hover tank through various rooms, pushing or shooting blocks, avoiding lasers, finally solving a quest you don't know about in the beginning. It seems that the whole thing is supposed to take place under water, a fact the Atari ST version tried to emphasize by turning the healthy CPC colors into shades of pale blue, not a very lucky decision.
The PC version used the at the time still common CGA graphics, which didn't look all that bad. Thankfully it had no music, but it played some sound samples over the PC speaker, which was a hot thing in France in the 80s.
