Battlefield 2 Rogue Battalions
Everything above this line is the Bonus.com game page for Battlefield 2: Rogue Battalions, rebuilt from the capture the Wayback Machine took on 2 January 2008. The description, the instructions and the keyboard shortcuts are the original text, reproduced word for word.
I rebuilt this game as Iron Dunes working from two screenshots, because I couldn't find anything written about the original. Then I went back through the archive properly and found the game page still sitting there at item.do?code=battle. It has the whole thing: the backstory, the clan roster, the resource loop, the frag rules, every key binding. This page puts that text somewhere a search engine can reach it.
The part nobody remembers
The game had a setting, and it was more than window dressing for a tank game on a kids' portal.
The year is 2210, and Earth has become the new frontier. Lawless, deadly, and bleak, the sun rises and sets over a dusty, arid world that once teemed with life. Environmental disasters began the home world's descent into a slow, lingering demise. Dwindling natural resources made the idea of permanent bases and communities in space and on our neighboring planets welcome to many humans. Vast numbers fled the Earth and struck out to build their own civilizations far away from the once blue planet.
But through hard work the remaining denizens of Earth began to restore their blighted world, just in time to attract the attention of the inhabitants of Mars, who decided to invade. The Venusian immigrants tried to step in to keep the peace but their efforts have only prolonged the inevitable. Meanwhile even Earth's residents have split into brave defenders and greedy mercenaries.
That explains the clan names, which had always read as arbitrary to me. They're four factions in one story, and the page gives each one an adjective.
| Clan | The page's word for them | Who they are |
|---|---|---|
| Martian Militia | warlike | The invaders from Mars |
| Peace Keepers | determined | Venusian immigrants trying to stop the war |
| Dune Dragoons | mercenary | Earth residents in it for themselves |
| Blue Tide | desperate | Earth's remaining defenders |
And they weren't a free-for-all. The page pairs them off: Blue Tide against Dune Dragoons, Martian Militia against Peace Keepers. A kill only counted as a frag if the target came from your mortal enemy clan and held a rank equal to or higher than your own. So the invaders fought the peacekeepers and the two Earth factions fought each other, which tracks with the story exactly.
What the original page confirms about the loop
I built Iron Dunes around drilling, hauling, fighting and ranking up, reasoning backwards from one gameplay screenshot. The original page describes the same loop:
- You start with 20 of each Resource, spent on repairs, refueling and ammunition when you get back to base.
- Resources come from attacking enemy tanks, attacking supply trucks, finding crates, or mining. Your tank carries a limited amount, so a full load means a trip home.
- Resources pay for repairs, ammo and upgrades, which is the whole reason hauling matters.
- Clicking on yourself buries your tank in the sand. You go invisible, enemies can still find you on radar, and you take half damage.
- Rank gates command: [F] Follow orders lower-ranked tanks to fight alongside you, and the higher your rank the more you can command.
Two places where Iron Dunes goes its own way. The original was massively multiplayer, with real accounts, one tank per avatar, and a Clan War tallied weekly across the whole player base, promoting the top five generals per clan to Master General. Iron Dunes is single player, because there's no netcode and the three rival clans are NPCs that fight each other as well as you. The original also moved and aimed on mouse click, with a green indicator marking your destination. Iron Dunes puts movement on WASD and the turret on the mouse, which is what a game you drive continuously wants.
The announcement at the top
Game pages on Bonus.com carried a notice box, and it changed over time. The January 2008 capture is mid Clan War. An earlier capture from October 2007 caught the moment the game came out of beta:
Important Announcement for Beta Testers! Bonus.com's Beta is now complete and we're ready to launch. As a thank you to all our testers we've awarded you the ultra-rare "Intrepid" to start your award collection.
Unfortunately, with the full launch of the game all beta tester tanks have been reset so that everyone starts on a level playing field.
Somewhere out there are people who still have an ultra-rare Intrepid on an account that stopped existing around 2011.
About the text on this page
The description, instructions and shortcuts above are Bonus.com's own 2008 copy, reproduced as written. That includes the typos, so "Keyboard Shotcuts" and "The rank of the enemy tank is must be equal to or higher than your own" are theirs. Correcting them would make this a worse copy of the record.
The page furniture is rebuilt rather than copied: the 722-pixel panel, the 36-pixel title bar, the bold 16px Arial heading in #37628d, the justified 347-pixel text column and the 12px body copy in #046 all come from the page's own inline CSS. The 300x250 game slot linked to game.do?game=battle&mode=SINGLE. Here it links to the rebuild.
Play Iron Dunes The Bonus.com homepage
If you played this
I'm still looking for the SWF, a clan screenshot, a rank table, a forum thread, anything. The text on this page is the most complete record I've found and it's still only a game page. You can reach me on X, or open an issue on the Iron Dunes repo.