Bradley Trainer Arcade - Attract Mode (Not really a game?)
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The Bradley Trainer wasn’t a commercial arcade game at all. It was actually a military training simulator developed in the late 1980s, based on Atari’s arcade hit Battlezone (1980). The U.S. Army had taken notice of Battlezone’s unique first-person wireframe graphics, which looked a lot like peering through the targeting scope of a real armored vehicle. They approached Atari and asked them to adapt it into something that could be used to train gunners on the M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle.
So Atari built a special version of the game in 1981–82, unofficially nicknamed the Bradley Trainer. Instead of the abstract geometric shapes from the arcade version, this one included more realistic battlefield targets: tanks, missiles, and even friendly units you weren’t supposed to shoot. It was designed to teach quick recognition and targeting in a safe, simulated environment.
Only a handful of these machines were ever produced — some sources say as few as two prototypes — and they were never released to the public. In fact, most Atari staff didn’t even know the project was happening, as it was considered semi-secret work with the Army. For years, the Bradley Trainer was thought lost, but a few cabinets eventually surfaced in private collections, becoming legendary among arcade historians.
So while it looked like an arcade cabinet, it was really a bridge between gaming and military simulation. It showed how advanced arcade technology was in the early ’80s — advanced enough that the Army thought it could train real soldiers.