Battleship (game)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The game Battleship (also known as Battleships) is a guessing game played by two people. It is known throughout the world as a pencil and paper game and predates World War I in this form. It was invented by Clifford Von Wickler in the early 1900s, but he never patented the game and it was soon published by Milton Bradley Company in 1943 as the pad-and-pencil game "Broadsides, the Game of Naval Strategy".[1]
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[edit] Description
The game is played on four square grids, two for each player. The grids are typically square – usually 10 × 10 – and the individual squares in the grid are identified by letter and number.[2] On one grid the player arranges ships and records the shots by the opponent. On the other grid the player records their own shots.
Before play begins, each player arranges a number of ships secretly on the grid for that player. Each ship occupies a number of consecutive squares on the grid, arranged either horizontally or vertically. The number of squares for each ship is determined by the type of the ship. The ships cannot overlap (i.e., at most one ship can occupy any given square in the grid). The types and numbers of ships allowed are the same for each player. These may vary depending on the rules.
There are two typical complements of ships, as given in the Milton Bradley version of the rules:
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After the ships have been positioned, the game proceeds in a series of rounds. In each round, each player's turn consists of announcing a target square in the opponents' grid which is to be shot at. If a ship occupies the square, then it takes a hit. The player's opponent announces whether or not the shot hit one of his or her ships and then takes a turn. When all of the squares of a ship have been hit, the ship is sunk. After all of one player's ships have been sunk, the game ends and the other player wins.
For the Salvo variation, each player may take as many shots in one turn as he has ships remaining in play. The starting player announces all five shots, then his opponent announces which are hits. Each player has as many shots as he or she has vessels afloat in each turn. Thus each time a player's ship is entirely destroyed, that player has one fewer shot on all subsequent turns.
[edit] Variations
Electronic Battleship: Battleship Advanced Mission is for the Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Risk / Battleship / Clue, for the Game Boy Advance, Battleship / Connect Four / Sorry! / Trouble for the Nintendo DS, Monopoly / Boggle / Yahtzee / Battleship for the Nintendo DS.
Battleship has also been released on mobile phones, there also have been multiple versions of Battleship released on the PC, such as Battleship Fleet Command.
In 1977 Milton Bradley released a computerized Electronic Battleship[3], followed in 1989 by Electronic Talking Battleship[4].
Battleship was also part of Hasbro Family Game Night for the Playstation 2 and Wii, as well as the Xbox 360 (Xbox Live Arcade). These alter the rules, including the size of the grid (8 x 12 in the NES version, 8 x 8 in the Game Boy version), size of ships (it is common to feature a submarine that takes up only a single square) and special shot missiles for each ship (for example, in the NES version the cruiser has a 5-shot missile which strikes 5 squares in an X pattern on the grid in one turn. Submarine-tracking sonar and aerial reconnaissance to spot ships are also features).
Iterations of Battleship appear as applications on numerous social networking services, such as Qeep. RNASoft created Naval Attack based upon Battleship for Toshiba SPANworks which was also used as a technology demo for Toshiba SPANworks' ImmediaNet SDK for WiFi based devices like laptop, PDAs, Windows Mobile and users could play across the platform. Many online versions are also popular, such as Jason's Battleships or Battleships - General Quarters II.
[edit] Feature Film
It was announced in 2009 there were plans for a feature film based on the game. Peter Berg is in talks to direct for Universal Studios, with brother team Jon and Eric Hoeber writing the script.[5]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Jason's Battleships - Play Battleships online and get a highscore!
- Battleship Game - Online Battleship Game
- www.FreeOnlineBattleship.com - Play Battleship online free
- Armada (Java Applet) – an example of Battleships
- Battleship Official Rules – Rulebook insert for Battleship (2002 version)
- TotalBattleship - Combining Battleship with Morse Code
- Editing Battleship game
