until the player reaches the enemy's fort. The fort is a brick-barricaded tank which fires mortar rounds while the player attempts to take it out. In order to destroy this tank, the player must toss a grenade over the brick barricade, which can only be accomplished on foot. Once this is done, the tank will explode and an enemy soldier will wave a white flag, signalling surrender, plus 1,000 bonus points. The game repeats again with the infantry level, but enemy soldiers become increasingly quicker and deadlier in successive rounds; points are multiplied based on the level played. Ports Following its arcade coin-up release, ports of Front Line were released for the ColecoVision console and PC-8801 and Sharp X1 computers in 1983, Atari 2600 and MSX in 1984, and FM-7 and Nintendo Famicom in 1985. Reception The arcade game was a commercial success in Japan, where Game Machine listed Front Line as the seventh highest-grossing arcade video game of 1982. Game Machine later listed Front Line on their June 1, 1983 issue as being the twentieth most-successful table arcade unit of the month. In the United Kingdom, the arcade game had limited commercial success due to its initially high difficulty. The arcade game received mixed reviews upon release, with praise for its originality but criticism for its difficulty. Following its North American debut at the Amusement & Music Operators Association (AMOA) show in November 1982, Video Games magazine published two reviews. One review said "Taito has a knack for coming up with some of the most original and offbeat games in the business" with Front Line being "an example" of this, while noting the controls are similar to Taito's earlier Western Gun (1975). The other review listed it among the top ten "Misses" of the show and stated it was a "war game with a lot of potential, but also with a firing mechanism that's so difficult to maneuver it ruins the game". Computer and Video Games stated that, despite the initial difficulty, "the action really takes off" with the tank and it's "worth persevering with" until then. In the 1983 Arcade Awards, Front Line was a runner-up for Coin-Op Game of the Year, behind Pole Position. The award was given by Electronic Games, which stated that this "arcade approach to the dirty business of infantry combat forces the player to keep moving and firing constantly" and the "action is