An April Fools' Day gag to rival Metal Gear

The team at Gaijin Entertainment has released, for today only, a pair of alarmingly entertaining tanks. One has legs, and the other is made of rubber, and both are playable in-game today only.

The Soviet ST-1 is "the first and the only model of a walking tank" says the elaborate back story for the vehicle posted to War Thunder's devblog.

In April 1937, Armour Command of the Red Army sent the military operational requirements to Factory #184, these were the requirements for the development of "an armoured machine of a new type" with a maximum mass of 50 tons, protected by at least 60mm of armour and the option to install different weapon types. Depending on the task of the battle machine, a 107mm cannon, a 122mm howitzer or 152mm howitzer could be mounted. Additional weapons were a 45mm cannon, a high-calibre AA machine gun and a 20mm tank cannon.

In spite of the complexity of the task the construction bureau of the factory managed to cope with the new design and the new battle machine (object 104 in the factory numeration) reached the factory testing stage which lasted for a year. During this period a considerable number of flaws were detected, these issues were eliminated as the tests proceeded.

Accompanying the blog are some extremely well doctored historical photos, like the one above, as well as detailed schematics.

I've played this game before. It was called Ring of Red and it was fantastic.

Sadly, my PlayStation disk had a scratch on it and I never did manage to finish it.

The second tank is called the SPS-255 and looks like a rubberized, inflatable decoy from the period used to confuse reconnaissance teams. It appears to fire carrots.