Apparently it had been announced at the 1996 E3 Expo held in May 1996, according to a forum post I found.
I saw a specific mention of June 1997 as an estimated release date, but that might simply be alternate notation for "Summer 1997".

Here are two magazines that mention it, plus a third which mentions it for sale:
https://archive.org/details/InterAction_Magaz … erra_On-Line_US
https://archive.org/details/gambler_magazine-1997-02
https://books.google.com/books?id=KO0zAQAAIAA … istance+2024%22

Furthermore, here's yet another scan of the Avalon Hill catalog.
http://www.card-tower.eu/avalon-hill-game-catalog

Is it Defiance? They had to create a "Visceral Productions" division to sell that one separately from their Avalon Hill brand since it's all action. Maybe they dropped the strategy part after analyzing the C&C clone-saturated market and gave it a reboot, or maybe the strategy part wasn't realized in the design and they had developed mostly the action part. If they made it as planned it would have to compete with...... um, Uprising. Nevertheless the engine does feel like a pre-Quake sector-based thing with some hi color stuff tacked on.

I remember Defiance particularly... because CGW <3 Avalon Hill 😁

Defiance: interesting, I did notice that mentioned as I browsed forward at avalonhill.com's history. I looked to see if it was an obvious name change, but their site sounded "too" action oriented. The mobygames review you link makes it sound much more likely.

avalonhill.com archive on Coming Soon: Defiance wrote:

What would happen if Descent(tm) had a real hair-raising story... if your guns, guts, and smarts were put to the test again and […]
Show full quote

What would happen if Descent(tm) had a real hair-raising story...
if your guns, guts, and smarts were put to the test again and again...
if you were test pilot for an outrageous new weapon system when suddenly all hell breaks loose and you're the only one who can fight for man's very existence?

It's happened!

Your chance to DIE will come October 1997
avalonhill.com defiance web advert

With some fun screenshots.

The "for sale" link is great! Google OCR says the numbers following are "Tank Resistance 2024 05/98 139 99", which I take to mean released in 05/98 and available for $39.99, but I could be way off. The other two mags I couldn't track down references in, maybe just "tank" and "resistance" but not "tank resistance"? No worries. 😀 I'll flip through the CGW museum entries to see if I can get some context or a better scan for what Google's found.

And cool, I was briefly looking to see if there were other AH Catalogs scanned, but didn't turn this up. Would have saved me the hassle of scanning, but better this way. Was briefly tempted to scan it all, am glad to see that problem has already been solved. Cavewars is the other game I was looking at from the catalog, but that one is known and documented everywhere, and decent reviews, too.

Very cool, so much more than I was able to turn up, ya'll rock!

edit:
Yes, I found listings in CGW #168 & #170 (July & September '98), so a name change seems less likely. Is in the advert for 'www.cdmag.com/chips.html' - Chips & Bits, of course! 😁 Not having any luck browsing Wayback machine's cdmag or chipsbits sites, too bad. Still, anything is still possible - game not actually released, old name printed, whatever. But it looks much better chance that the game was released now than when I started. Thanks, again!

Chips & Bits often lists unreleased games. It's had Earthbound 64 on it for years 🤣

Right, didn't mean to imply that I thought that it was released - based on the evidence, I don't.

Anyhow, don't talk me up too much, the links I posted are fairly easily found if you put "Tank Resistance 2024" in quotes and enter it into Google, and then troll through every service they have to offer. I suspect if you didn't see them that you did not use quotes?

The first two magazines were found because Internet Archive translates every PDF/etc. uploaded to multiple formats, including TXT file (after OCR):
https://ia801800.us.archive.org/35/items/Inte … ine_US_djvu.txt
https://ia801601.us.archive.org/28/items/gamb … 2_1997_djvu.txt

Ah, makes sense. I was using "Search Inside" the Archive PDF, and the first one doesn't turn up anything - but using the text version I found it in another Chips & Bits advert (With "NOW" in the release/available column!). The other one's "search inside" worked, so either I blew it yesterday or... what.. didn't try it? Dunno. It has a nice longer blurb, but no images and appears to be the same text as the advertisement we already have, just in Polish.

This level of success is both encouraging and irksome, since it's not nothing! I'll try to setup a long term search for this, and see if anyone wanders by these posted questions in future. Any other avenues ya'll can think of for info? Old Avalon Hill boards, '90s CG wargamer boards... I'll see what I can come up with.

Flipping through the magazine, fun reviews, and the review for Project Overkill looks fun - but mobygames says Playstation, too bad: http://www.mobygames.com/game/playstation/project-overkill
Always looking for a halfway decent Crusader: No Remorse/Regret knock off.

If I were you, I would probably try to get in touch with people who worked for Avalon Hill at the time, they would surely have the lowdown on what happened with this game.

That's a good idea. (gulp!) I don't know why it's a little scary, but... I'll work on it. 😁

I also posted over at wargamer.com as a first attempt at connecting with a likely target audience.

edit: and someone there said they were an Avalon Hill covering wargame reviewer at that time, and would have seen it if it ever came out - totally Vaporware likely taken down by AH's troubled finances and buyout by Hasbro. (Or at least that's my translation!) Too bad! We'll see if anything else pops.