Spearhead 1998 Tank Sim

[RetroGamer]

I just ordered a new shrink wrapped copy of Spearhead. Box, CD, Manual, etc. brand new from eBay. I’m going to travel back in time to 1998 and immerse myself in this tank game when it shows up in the mailbox tomorrow.

It’s always good to have one or two legacy desktop PCs around for running Windows 98 games with 3dfx! My PC HDD has had a thorough Scandisk check, is defragmented and waiting to install this classic obscure simulation.

I remember in this forum a while back (might have been almost 20 years ago…) there was a “Spearhead Marathon Weekend” or tournament, or something. Somebody organized forum members to play the game over the weekend and post results. This is assuming I’m remembering correctly. If anybody knows about this, please point me to those old posts, I’d love to read them!

Back in the day, I bought iM1A2 and couldn’t get into it. I then bought iPanzer’44 and it didn’t really do it for me, either. When Spearhead came out, I played the demo, enjoyed it, but didn’t buy it because I felt like I’d already spent too much money on games it turned out I didn’t like.

It’s time to give Spearhead another chance! I’ve played M1TP2 a lot now and have grown a little bored with it. Same with the Armored Fist games. I’ll be honest, I’m bored with all of them.

If anybody likes this game and has anything to say about it, I’d love to hear from you. Maybe we can do a “Spearhead Marathon Weekend II” around Veterans Day or something if you guys are still playing it.

Thanks!!

[RetroGamer]

UPDATE:

Ok, I found it! There was a Spearhead revival back in 2000. Did anybody here participate in that?

http://www.tanksim.com/spear_revival.htm#spear_contest

I’m just looking forward to installing and playing this game. These YouTube gameplay videos are somewhat fun to watch.




https://www.youtube.com/live/VfOFSUHZSus?feature=shared

[RetroGamer]

Wow - I mis-remembered what this game was like. I only played the demo back then and I must have been in software mode instead of D3D or Glide.

This game is good!

I got it running in Windows 98 and XP. I’ll give fraps a try and see if I can come up with gameplay videos. The ones on YouTube don’t show what this game is about sufficiently, IMO.

[agathosdaimon]

i liked it, it though is perhaps the last 90s tank sim that i am yet to get working in in windows11. everything else, even m1tp2 i have eventually figure out or found a work around to get workign but not spearhead


none of the wrappers or emulation programs have worked yet for me

[RetroGamer]

Originally Posted by agathosdaimon

i liked it, it though is perhaps the last 90s tank sim that i am yet to get working in in windows11. everything else, even m1tp2 i have eventually figure out or found a work around to get workign but not spearhead


none of the wrappers or emulation programs have worked yet for me

I hear ya…trying to get old games to run properly is almost like a game itself! I have a few PCs that people just gave to me that run Windows 98 and XP.

Spearhead runs on both. I’ve been testing it all weekend and it runs the best on an old P133 with a Trident 3D Blade PCI card in Direct 3D in Win98. It looks great with my Voodoo 2 PC but there’s an artifact that shows up and bugs me,

I’m so sick of the old stuff that Spearhead is really cool. I just did all the tutorials. Looking forward to the campaign.

[RetroGamer]

I’ve been playing Spearhead for a few weeks now on a Windows 98 desktop and would like to upload some gameplay videos.

Fraps seems to only work in XP.

How does one capture 3dfx gameplay on an old machine?

As a last resort, I could upload some clips from a different PC running XP. On that machine, the direct X install is played and Fraps should work. Spearhead looks best with my voodoo2 card.

Any help is appreciated.