Tank Controls
Character-relative movement
Tank controls steer a character by turning on the spot and walking the way it faces, whatever the camera does. The 1993-2012 sources here cover the fixed cameras of Alone in the Dark, the slow retreats of Resident Evil, the side-step Resident Evil 4 refused, and the late arrival of the name.
“Tank controls” is the name later given to the way the fixed-camera 3D adventures of the 1990s steered their characters: turn on the spot, then walk in the direction you face, whatever the camera is doing. The phrase itself is a retrospective one. In the sources held here it first appears in 2012, and then about Resident Evil 4, not about the games the term is now used for. What the period sources describe instead is the problem the scheme answered — camera angles that cut without warning — and the restrictions that came with it: slow retreats, no side-step, standing still to shoot.
Fast facts
- The problem: pre-rendered backgrounds seen from fixed cameras that cut as the character moves — “some have up to nine!” (Computer Gaming World, February 1993, on Alone in the Dark).
- The line of descent: Alone in the Dark (1992) “imitated successfully by Capcom with Resident Evil” (Edge, June 1996).
- The restriction the reviewers noticed: “you can run forwards but only retreat in painfully slow steps” (Edge, June 1996).
- The restriction the designer kept: no side-step in Resident Evil 4 — “it hurt the game balance” (Hiroyuki Kobayashi, Edge, February 2005).
- The phrase: earliest use held here is Edge 238, March 2012.
Fixed cameras before the term
Alone in the Dark put polygon characters in front of painted backgrounds and cut between camera positions as the player moved. Chris Lombardi’s preview in Computer Gaming World (February 1993) is mostly about that: “As one’s character moves about a room, one’s perspective will change many times”, and “While many rooms have only two such camera views, some have up to nine!” He also named the cost. “Gamers should be warned, however, that the unique cinematic angles sometimes get too clever. Swift changes in the viewpoint can occasionally be disastrous when the player’s character is in combat mode. At the very least, these shifts can be disorienting.” The game was played from the keypad, because “the game often requires fine movements which make mouse control inappropriate”.
Peter Olafson’s Compute review (July 1993) described the same view — “as if you’re watching your character from a trapdoor just above and to the side”, shifting “sometimes a number of times, depending on where you’re standing” — and found the game “very easy to control. The keyboard interface is almost as transparent as the game’s ethereal critters.”
Neither writer says which key turned the character and which walked him. The scheme was not remarkable enough in 1993 to describe.
Resident Evil
Edge drew the line of descent in June 1996, the month it reviewed Resident Evil: “The 3D virtual world created by Infogrames in Alone in The Dark opened up an entirely new way for developers to deliver gaming universes. Although recently it has been imitated successfully by Capcom with Resident Evil…” The review itself found “precise, confident control of the player character”, and listed among the things “geared towards suspense” the “skewed camera angles” and “the fact that you can run forwards but only retreat in painfully slow steps.”
Paul Valles, in Computer and Video Games the following month, read the same restrictions as the point: “Both Jill and Chris respond instantly to commands, and their restrictions enhance player involvement as opposed to limiting it - they walk slowly backward, and take time recovering between gun shots or knife swipes. It all adds to the tension.”
The verdict did not hold. A 2010 Retro Gamer hardware guide, explaining why 1996 was the year the console makers “turned to analogue sticks for help”, put it as “remember how dire the controls were in Resident Evil.”
Rooted to the spot
Resident Evil 4 (2005) moved the camera over Leon Kennedy’s shoulder and dropped the fixed angles, but kept part of the old scheme. Edge’s review caption: “Holding R draws your weapon, whereupon you manipulate a laser-style sight with the same stick you use for movement, ensuring that in some respects this plays just like previous Resident Evils since you’re rooted to the spot when shooting.”
That was a decision, and Hiroyuki Kobayashi, the game’s producer, explained it to Edge a month earlier. Asked whether changes since the Tokyo Game Show build came from player feedback, he said many did — the knife on one button, reloading on two — and then: “One request we did not add was the side step. We tested it, but it hurt the game balance, making it less RE and more of a simple shooter. You could dodge most of the enemy attacks, and there was no more anxiousness over what could be waiting around corners, as you could look without exposing yourself entirely.”
A reader, Richard Cross, wrote to Edge two issues later to say the review had “spent 125 words berating the dreadful control system” and then excused it as the product of “extensive playtesting”. His objection is the clearest period statement of what the scheme felt like from the other side: “I cannot forgive a game that expects you to defend yourself against multiple enemies but doesn’t let you look around corners, step left or right, and that glues you to the spot giving you a 45-degree aiming ‘cone’ whenever you want to fire a gun”. Or: “If I drove a car whose steering wheel only turned 45 degrees from left to right, I guess it would certainly keep me on my toes”. Edge replied that the review’s claim came from Kobayashi himself, in the issue 146 interview.
The name
The phrase “tank controls” does not appear in any 1990s source held here. Its first appearance is in Edge 238 (March 2012), and it is used of Resident Evil 4. Rhys Cadle of Climax, describing a Silent Hill: Origins build that had set out to copy that game: “some of the things that didn’t work 100 per cent in Resident Evil 4, like that control scheme, with the offset character and the tank controls, is great in open spaces, but if you put it in a corridor then it’s not so good.”
By the time Resident Evil 6 arrived the phrase was standard and the scheme was being retired. Edge’s preview (August 2012) noted that “the old tank controls were designed to avoid empowering players with too much freedom of movement”, which is Kobayashi’s side-step argument restated; its review (December 2012) opened with “The tank controls are out, replaced by a dual-analogue setup that’s ornamented with a set of evasive dives and rolls. After the intensely pressurised action of Resident Evil 4 and 5, it’s a change that feels overdue”.
The input mapping itself — which button turns, which walks — is not described in any source held here, so this page does not tabulate it. The other games usually listed alongside Resident Evil under this heading (Tomb Raider, Silent Hill, Grim Fandango, Dino Crisis) are not covered by the sources above and are left out.