Video Games Encyclopedia

Artillery is the generic name for either early two- or three-player (usually turn-based) computer games involving tanks fighting each other in combat or similar derivative games. Artillery games are among the earliest computer games developed; the theme of such games is an extension of the original uses of computer themselves, which were once used to calculate the trajectories of rockets and other related military-based calculations. Artillery games have been typically described as a type of turn-based tactics game, though they have also been described as a type of “shooting game.”
Early precursors to the modern artillery-type games were text-only games that simulated artillery entirely with input data values. These early versions of turn-based tank combat games interpreted human-entered data such as the distance between the tanks, the velocity or “power” of the shot fired and the angle of the tanks’ turrets.