Pocket Tanks is still here. The two-player artillery duel BlitWise first shipped on PC in 2001 keeps landing on new iPhones, barely changed and, by the developer's count, up to 400 weapons deep. It's a turn-based artillery game for iPhone that drops two tanks on a destructible hill and lets them trade shots until one runs out of damage to give.
A turn works the way it has since the Amiga era: set the angle, set the power, pick a weapon from the shop, and fire across the scrolling terrain. Land more damage than the other tank over a set of volleys and you win. The weapon list is the draw, from a plain lobbed shell to a Spider that scatters bomblets or a Super Star that rains points down a hillside, and the ground deforms with every hit. Modes cover same-device pass-and-play, local Wi-Fi, online turns against a friend, and matches against the AI.
Pocket Tanks descends from Scorched Tanks, the Amiga shareware game Michael Welch built after seeing Scorched Earth, and the App Store reviews read like a class reunion. People who played it on a school computer keep coming back, plenty of them single out the lack of ads, and couples and families log the most hours on one passed-around phone. The online side is where it frays: reviewers flag unbalanced weapons and long waits between turns, and it stays one-on-one, with no four-player option. Plenty of iPhoners are on their fourth or fifth phone since they first played it. It fits two people on one couch better than it fits matchmaking.
A 2001 artillery game that still gets new weapon packs and still gets played two-up on a couch is its own small miracle. The genre barely exists on mobile now, and this is the one that hung on.
