There was a similar game to that Tank moving one on the playstation. Cnat remember the name of it for the life of me. But when you described it I thought thats the game iv been trying to remember the name of it......1990 is a bit early thou. I remember playing it around 1997-99.

Any ideas what its called ppl???

I knowits a console game, forgive me. I am a PC gamer, but its one of my fav childhood memorys playing this game. Used to play it alongside Final Fantasy 7.

Karma for whoever gets it

Also one of the first RTS games out.

Actually, while the blessing effects from your starting magic are set in stone at the beginning (irritatingly - to me, anyway), the magic level can be raised through the 'Empowerment' command for any commander troop including your pretender, assuming you have enough magic gems of the type you want to improve (50 for a new path, and I think 30 for lvl 2, 45 for lvl 3, 60 for lvl 4, etc).

Earlier than the PS, although I enjoyed Warzone a lot.  Never played Uprising but the PS1 was during a time of financial drought (college).
I do recall a very fun puzzle game though which I'll put up next..

The RTS was top-down and if i recall correctly you could not control any of the units.. only issue them orders and then release them to their task.
The only thing you could actively control in this game was your ship/mech.  You used it to fly around the board, dropping off units and issuing orders.  I remember my favorite strategy was to fly around to the back of my enemies stronghold and drop off tanks (or whatever they were).  Generally my friend would set his units to "patrol" the front and be un-prepared.  The AI was always fooled by this.  No multi-threading here

Just checked out both links. Defenetly not either of them.

Ah well..  too far back I guess.

The game is Herzog Zwei

Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord?

or Alternate Reality perhaps?

The Bard's Tale?

I first played it on my Commodore 64c.  A friend of mine would get disks full of games from his uncle and we would just Load "$",8 our way through them.  The Bard's Tale was one of those games and neither one of us had any clue what to do with it.  I was only about 10 or 12 I believe. 

I think I asked him to get a copy of the spells as well... somehow I ended up with one.  You needed a listing of the spells for this game as they were not available as a list to choose from in game.  Each time you wanted to cast, say, Mage Flame you needed to type in MAFL.  Tedious by today's standards but business as usual then. 

The game was essentially played out in a series of mazes.  From Skara Brae (the city) to a series of dungeon locations like the sewers or mage tower.  There was no in-game map so I resorted to the now-classic-but-then-required graph paper mapping of each dungeon. 

This was the first RPG I ever played (and finished) and I absolutely loved it.  There were many more that immediately followed (Wizardry IV, Magic Candle, Alternate Reality, Might and Magic...) but The Bard's Tale will always have the top spot for me.

Having said that I could never go back and play it....  I've tried.  I grabbed a c64 emulator and fired up a game.  It's really unforgiving.  I know I have gotten soft with the games of today and all of the features we now have...  but when you put together the fact that it is a tough game to get started with the "nostalgic" graphics and interface, as well as the fact that I have a golden memory to hold it up against...  it will never be played again

You are correct.

A hint, Its pretty much Bards Tale, but its not Bards Tale I, II or III. I think it had some extras like being able to disarm your opponents.

BAne of the Cosmic Forge?

Perihelion?