Tank City Reboot Free. Plays in your browser, on a computer or a phone.

Tank City Reboot

The Family Computer tank classic, rebuilt inside a computer.

Tank City Reboot being played
Click the game, then play with the arrow keys and Space. A gamepad works too.

Your antivirus tank guards the CPU core at the bottom of a circuit board. Twenty malware tanks come at it each stage, four at a time, through firewalls, silicon, coolant and encrypted zones. Every stage opens with a true fact about how computers work, and every power-up is named for the real idea it borrows.

How to play

Move
Arrow keys or WASD, a gamepad, or the direction pad on a touch screen.
Fire
Space, J or Z, gamepad button A, or Fire on a touch screen.
Pause
P, Enter or Escape, gamepad Start, or Pause on a touch screen.
Goal
Destroy all 20 malware tanks in a stage before any of them hits the CPU core.

What is on the field, and the real idea behind it

Malware

  • Worm

    The basic tank: slow, one hit.

    The real idea: A worm copies itself from computer to computer over a network, without anyone opening a file.

  • Trojan

    Moves twice as fast as a worm.

    The real idea: A trojan hides inside a program that looks useful, and does its harm once you run it.

  • Spyware

    Fires fast shots.

    The real idea: Spyware watches what you do on a computer and reports it to someone else.

  • Rootkit

    Armored: takes four hits.

    The real idea: A rootkit buries itself deep in the operating system so it is hard to find and remove.

Power-ups

  • Patch

    A shield for ten seconds.

    The real idea: A patch is a software update that closes a security hole.

  • Overclock

    Upgrades your cannon: faster shots, then two shots, then shots that break silicon.

    The real idea: Overclocking runs a chip faster than its rated clock speed.

  • Breakpoint

    Freezes every enemy for eight seconds.

    The real idea: A breakpoint makes a debugger pause a running program at a chosen line.

  • Garbage collection

    Wipes out every enemy on the field.

    The real idea: Garbage collection finds memory that no part of a program uses any more and frees it.

  • Firewall rebuild

    Turns the wall around the CPU core to silicon for fifteen seconds.

    The real idea: A firewall checks network traffic against rules and blocks what breaks them.

  • Backup

    One extra life.

    The real idea: A backup is a copy of your data kept somewhere else, so you can restore it after a loss.

Terrain

  • Firewall

    Breaks under fire, a block at a time.

    The real idea: Firewalls sit between networks and filter what passes.

  • Silicon

    Stops every shot until your cannon is fully overclocked.

    The real idea: Silicon is the material most computer chips are made from.

  • Coolant

    Tanks cannot cross it; shots fly over it.

    The real idea: Liquid cooling carries heat away from a chip faster than air.

  • Encrypted zone

    Hides any tank inside it.

    The real idea: Encrypted data looks like random noise to anyone without the key.

  • Data bus

    Slippery: tanks slide before they stop.

    The real idea: A bus is the set of shared lines that carries data between the processor, memory and devices.