Battlezone M580A2 "Razor" by @WanderingSkipper (Skip Waters)

Those who played the 90's remake of "Battlezone" are more than likely to find this familiar. The game is a favorite of mine, and it featured great gameplay, graphics (At the time), and most of all, storytelling. It was set in the 60's, with the player being a participant in a secret Space Race to gather an alien material called "bio-metal" with which the factions could use to fabricate fantastic technologies.

Unlike most other genre-fusion games, Battlezone could be considered a true hybrid of First-Person-Shooter, and Real-Time-Strategy, because as the player, you are doing plenty of both simultaneously throughout the game. Unfortunately, that last detail was said to be one of the biggest marketing problems the game encountered, as it appealed mainly to gamers who were interested in BOTH FPS and RTS. However, it did recieve great reviews all around, and was the center of my gaming and modding life for quite some time, as was it's sequel (Not to be confused with the crazyily challenging Red Odyssey expansion.), though that was less well recieved. I might get into that another time.

Anyhoo, this is supposed to be the NSDF's M580A2 "Razor" Scout, with a few mostly-minor changes. BZ was made in a time when ingame models consisted of much simpler models, where polygons generally numbered only in the hundreds, and texture maps were 128x128-256x256 in resolution (The detail levels nowadays have around 10-100 times more clarity, plus other perks.). There were also a few brief moments during the pre-rendered cutscenes where higher-res models were shown, though even then, details were not easy to make out.

So naturally, taking some creative liberty was one of the best courses of action. Many of the details are either based on what could be gathered from the game itself, or added because I thought they looked cool. Of course, it's no accident the cockpit area resembles a fighter plane, as the Battlezone lore mentioned that this particular vehicle's initial prototype was partially built with parts from grounded aircraft, including a P-47's cockpit section.

It is possible that the appearance of this vehicle can mislead a few folks. While called and deployed as a "fighter" craft by some, it actually hovers a short distance from the ground, and is driven much like a ground vehicle. The Razor is an armed reconaissance vehicle, so it handles more like a high-performance sports-car than a tank, and it's capacity to jump for short distances added a whole new facet to tank-to-tank combat.

The game itself is almost impossible to find outside of eBay nowadays, and if you can ever obtain a copy, especially the Gold Edition, then you would be considered by the Battlezone community to be a very, very lucky gamer...

... Then again, if you have a copy of BZ: Gold, and you do not really want to keep it... May I have it? Please? :D

Battlezone & related terms, such as M580A2 and Razor are (C) to whoever owns Battlezone.