Shark Bytes

In 1980, the U.S. Army approached arcade behemoth Atari about the possibility of converting the developer’s latest hit, Battlezone, into a kind of inexpensive trainer for its newest line of tanks. Battlezone, with its first-person perspective and vector graphics, was one of the first stepping stones traversed on the path to virtual reality. Atari poured considerable effort into converting two arcade cabinets into prototypes, which the Army apparently considered and discarded.

There are some apocryphal tales whispered between coin-op enthusiasts of the military mass-producing the machines in secret.