Armored Car (video game)

Lore & Background

Armored Car was developed by Chris Oberth and Gunars Licitis, inspired by the video game Targ. The player drives an armored car through a city from a top-down view which scrolls right to left. Some intersections are marked with directions that must be followed. The player can pick up money to deliver to banks while avoiding criminals by dropping sawhorses in the road. Points are scored by number of city blocks travelled, picking up money, and blowing up robbers. Fuel levels need to be replenished at gas stations throughout the city. The player can speed up by pressing a button to shift the car into a higher gear.

Reader's Guide

Armored Car is notable as a maze game that introduced scrolling from right to left and directional intersections that must be followed. It features multiple vehicle types: a steam roller that changes directional arrows to sawhorses, a street sweeper that sweeps up sawhorses and directional arrows, and a T.N.T. truck that moves in a straight line from right to left unless it views the armored car, then pursues the player in a straight line. If the truck crashes into a wall, the player gains 1000 bonus points. The game was reviewed by Bill Kunkel for Electronic Games, who described it as a fairly unique and highly interesting game concept with interesting audio and graphics. It is listed alongside Getaway! and Targ in related games.

Did You Know?

• Armored Car was inspired by the video game Targ.
• The T.N.T. truck moves straight from right to left and does not change direction.
• If the T.N.T. truck crashes into a wall, the player gains 1000 bonus points.
• The steam roller clears both sawhorses and directional arrows from the road.

Core Gameplay & Mechanical Design

Armored Car presents a top-down maze experience in which the player pilots an armored vehicle through a cityscape that scrolls from right to left. The core loop revolves around collecting scattered cash and delivering it to banks while fending off criminal opponents. The player's primary defensive tool is the sawhorse, which can be dropped into the road to block or eliminate pursuing robbers. Scoring is layered: points accumulate for every city block traversed, for each bundle of money gathered, and for each criminal destroyed. Resource management adds a survival dimension, as the vehicle's fuel gauge depletes and must be refilled at gas stations across the map. A dedicated button lets the player shift into a higher gear for increased speed. As progress continues, the city grows more populated with hostile vehicles. A steam roller can convert directional arrows into sawhorses, while a street sweeper clears both from the streets. The most dangerous opponent is the T.N.T. truck, which travels in a straight line from right to left until it spots the armored car, then pursues directly. Should the truck slam into a wall, the player earns a 1000-point bonus.

Development & Creative Lineage

Armored Car was developed by Chris Oberth and Gunars Licitis and released by Stern Electronics in 1981. The game's design drew direct inspiration from Targ, another maze-based arcade title, suggesting the developers sought to take the established maze formula and infuse it with a distinctly automotive identity. Rather than the abstract, geometric corridors typical of the genre, Armored Car transplanted its maze logic into a recognizable urban environment complete with intersections, directional signage, and traffic. This recontextualization gave the familiar right-to-left scrolling structure a narrative wrapper of banking runs and criminal pursuit. Stern Electronics published the title as part of its arcade catalog, and the collaboration between Oberth and Licitis produced a result that reviewers would later describe as a notably original take on the maze genre. The game's placement alongside titles like Getaway! and Targ in reference materials underscores its position within a specific lineage of overhead-view maze games that defined a particular era of arcade design.

Critical Reception

Critical response to Armored Car, while limited in the surviving record, was notably positive. Bill Kunkel, writing for Electronic Games, singled out the title as possessing a "fairly unique, and highly interesting, game concept," a description that highlights how the game stood apart from the more formulaic maze titles of its era. Kunkel specifically praised the combination of audio and graphics, noting that together they created an experience "that even young arcaders should enjoy." His overall assessment characterized the game as both "delightful" and a "fun" contest, language that suggests the title succeeded in making its mechanical complexity feel accessible and entertaining rather than punishing. The emphasis on the game's uniqueness is particularly telling: in a period when arcade cabinets were often judged on novelty and visual spectacle, Armored Car's automotive theme and layered scoring system gave it a distinct identity. The fact that the game is still catalogued on reference sites like Arcade History and the Killer List of Videogames speaks to its continued place in the historical record of 1980s arcade design, even if it never achieved the cultural ubiquity of some of its contemporaries.

Legacy & Historical Context

Armored Car occupies a specific niche in the history of 1981 arcade gaming: an overhead-view maze title that wrapped its core mechanics in a driving simulation skin. Its lineage is clear from the reference materials that group it alongside Targ, its stated inspiration, and Getaway!, another vehicle-based arcade experience. This clustering suggests that the early 1980s saw a brief but distinct wave of games that married maze navigation with automotive or vehicular themes, offering players a sense of forward momentum and urban traversal that pure geometric mazes could not. Stern Electronics, as the publisher, was one of several smaller companies competing in the arcade space during this period, and Armored Car represented their contribution to that competitive landscape. The game's survival in reference databases such as Arcade History and the Killer List of Videogames ensures that its design choices—the sawhorse defense mechanic, the T.N.T. truck pursuit, the fuel management loop—remain documented for future study. For players who experienced it in a local arcade in 1981, the game offered a compact, self-contained challenge that balanced resource management, spatial awareness, and reflex-based evasion within a single scrolling cityscape.