Panzer Bandit is a PlayStation video game, developed by Fill-In Cafe and released by Banpresto

Banpresto

is a Japanese toy company, best known in America for game development, headquartered in the Shinagawa Seaside West Building in Shinagawa, Tokyo. It was founded April 1977 as Hoei Sangyo, Co. Ltd. The company was renamed Coreland in 1982, and during the 1980s it worked mainly as a subcontractor for...

 in 1997.

The game is a side-scrolling beat 'em up

Beat 'em up

Beat 'em up is a video game genre featuring melee combat between the protagonist and a large number of underpowered antagonists. These games typically take place in urban settings and feature crime-fighting and revenge-based plots, though some games may employ historical or fantasy themes...

, remarkably similar to Sega and Treasure's 1996 release Guardian Heroes

Guardian Heroes

is a 2D side-scrolling beat 'em up and hack & slash action RPG video game in the vein of Final Fight or Golden Axe. The game features RPG elements. Guardian Heroes was developed by Treasure and released in 1996 for the Sega Saturn video game console...

. However, The character sprites are much more embellished, and there are only two planes of movement.

The gameplay is fairly simple with 2 attack buttons (strong and weak) and the directional pad for moving left, right, crouching, and jumping. Shoulder buttons can also be used to change between foreground and background and can be used to activate the character's special attack.

An unusual aspect of the game is that if the player stands still during an attack, it is considered a guard. Other features include a combo counter and a guided elemental attack which launches an enemy.

There are a total of 12 characters including the 4 story characters and the 8 unlockable bosses.

There are 8 stages to complete in total.

Story

In the world of Panzer Bandit, sources have since gone scarce with the reduction in energy that is consistently used by humans. For this, an organization called Arc, led by the evil Prof. Fuarado, seek to manipulate the consumption of preserved energy and ultimately conquer the world with that in possession. For the course of the game, your heroes are required to take the preserved energy before Arc and ultimately, destroy whatever is left of Arc.