The Bradley Trainer video game by Atari

When I was a kid in 1980 and saw Atari's video game Battle Zone for the first time in my local arcade, I was instantly blown away. Nothing anyone have ever seen before. Consequently it got a spot at my MAME roms web page and created fond memories. True, there was Asteroids from Atari from a year prior, but those born in the 1970s and before witnessed the first First Person shooter with Battle Zone. A full decade, before Doom came out.

It must have been 1981 when a pal and I used to hang out at video arcades. He mentioned there was a version especially tailored for the US military. It felt really good to have access to Battle Zone and thinking, this must be cutting edge technology when even the US Army would use the game for combat training of their own soldiers. But later I thought the pal was just bragging with information he claims to have, and dismissed it.

It wasn't until the late 1990s when nostalgia kicked in and I started downloading video games ROMs for the M.A.M.E. emulator to play the games of my youth and dedicated a web page to now vintage games, that idea memories about this military version of Battle Zone reemerged. A quick search revealed a games called Bradley Trainer.

While looking where to download the Bradley Trainer ROM (see link above), I also read some web resources talking about the game. But they left some unanswered questions:

• Why is there almost no information what happened at the Army? Why was the Bradley Trainer rejected? It's decades, why wasn't the information declassified by now?
• Why has one of the two existing cabs has been lost? And how lucky was Scott to rescue the other from the dumpster. How could this cab get into the hands of someone willing to destroy this part of video game history anyway?
• After downloading the ROM set and playing it I noticed the option to insert coins, a high score number displayed while playing — umm, combat training I mean, and even a score table where player — combatants I mean — can leave their initials? There is also the same famous "Battle Zone" wireframe words floating to the top by getting smaller (did someone programming BZ was a Star Wars (1977) fan). Why wasn't that changed or removed in the Bradley Trainer?

T(h)anks!