The game is set in 2084 in a future where road accidents have been eliminated by technology, and the world is relatively bloodless; however, people now entertain themselves by drivers using 20th century automobiles in violent, gladiatorial contests.

[2] Up to two players battle each other or the computer with vehicles that use an assortment of armor, weapons, and other components including missiles, mines, machine guns, lasers, oil, and smoke.

[3] A notable gameplay element at the time of the game's release in 1984 was that cars would realistically "drift" when they tried to turn at a high speed.

[1][2] Battlecars was developed for the ZX Spectrum by SLUG (a Harlow co-operative of programmers who formerly worked for Red Shift) using BASIC.

[5] Roger Kean previewed Battlecars in Crash #9 (October 1984), calling it "rather more straightforward than one would expect from a company so immersed in the occult", and described the handling of the game's high speed vehicles "quite alarmingly realistic".