The initial view of the game is in 'on-board' mode, which is a first-person perspective of the arena. When players enter the game their tanks are placed randomly in the playing arena near their bases and are temporarily camouflaged to allow time to orient themselves with the current map and state of play. Perspective is maintained by the use of scalable vector graphics and visual interest is enhanced with special graphics for explosions using a custom character set to accomplish limited raster graphics animation. Game play is straightforward the player selects a pseudonym and a team, traverse the terrain looking for enemies to destroy on the way to their base. The object of the game is to destroy the opposing team's base. There are two teams, Squares and Triangles. Version A (1975) of Panther has recently been restored to active status on the Cyber1 CYBIS-based (a PLATO descendant) system, with direct permission of the developer.

John was a highly capable TUTOR IV programmer who created the overall game framework, providing key features such as team selection and messaging that turned the concept into a working game, later adding a number of refinements. Nelson also provided the Panther tank artwork, the vehicle motion, view, and damage equations, and a significant fraction of the original code. Nelson contributed the original concept of a tank combat game, which was inspired by Brand Fortner's Airfight, Jim Bowery's Spasim, and an unfinished tank game effort of Derek Ward. A 1977 development of Panther, with more refined graphics, was named Panzer, the German word for armour and tank. The game was developed for the multi-user interactive computer-based education PLATO system and programmed in the TUTOR programming language and utilized scalable vector graphics called linesets. Panther, a battle tank- driving simulation named after the Panther tank, was one of a handful of early first-person computer games developed by John Edo Haefeli and Nelson Bridwell in 1975 at Northwestern University.

Tank battle arcade game 1975