With the TV series of the same name on our screens Richard Wilcox should be assured good sales of his well promoted and now available game, but of course that still depends on the game itself, and Blue Thunder appears to stand the test with flying colours.
The basic objective is to fly your jetcopter off the deck of a ship, fly across a sea infested with islands, all heavily defended by the enemy, reach a base where many of your men are being held prisoner and rescue them. To do this you must come to rest over the base, shoot out a whirling, rising and falling device which results in a nuclear reactor shooting up out of the ground behind you. This is unstable, so you must destroy it quickly. The reactor is protected by some of the most state of the art hi-tech you've ever seen (wait for this) Photo-electric perimeter shield with Hyper-Phase Lazer deactivated lock externally, and internally and indestructible intermittent ultra-sonic quantum blaster!
What this actually means is that you must shoot away the yellow forced field by hitting the rising blue stripe in it, then edge into the reactor core, wait for a fractional gap between the intermittent ultra-sonic thingie and then bomb the hell out of the moving red dot on the floor of the reactor.
Getting to the enemy base is no picnic. Most of the islands are equipped with heat seeking rocket launchers or gun turrets, and on subsequent levels, not only do these fire more frequently at you, but they are joined by fighter planes, indestructible barrage balloons and a submarine armed with missiles that has a nose like a bloodhound. Top that off with a rapidly declining fuel supply and you have a game which should sort out the men from the boys.