Previous Next

This game really had me foxed for a while. About eighty other aircraft became insurers' liabilities before my first one flew out of the hangar.

This is a cross between War Games and Zaxxon. The scenario starts off with a satellite's eye view of a calm, peaceful world.

Missiles spring onto the scene (from the East, naturally) and then you, being a patriotic and peace loving soul, decide what to do about it.

Pushing the fire button (there is a keyboard option) produced a promising view of a hangar filled with lots of little yellow planes. The idea, I suppose, is to use these planes to stop the missiles from hitting a certain large Western landmass. One of them suddenly shot forward and headed for the hangar wall. With a little deft wriggling of the joystick I managed to speed it up and send it spinning into said wall, exploding like an egg in a microwave oven.

Eventually though, I managed to get a few planes out of the hangar and then it was back to the satellite. Guiding a little white dot to the launch silo of the dastardly commie pinko missile causes the screen to switch to something very Zaxxon-like. There, you and your shadow fly through obstacles (the plane banks beautifully ).Turbo-charged tanks, missiles and a few blastable objects all look vaguely familiar if you have played Beach Head. The sound effects sound very like they are courtesy of Harrier Attack, after the attack.

If you survive this lot, you face a selection of enemy silos shooting at you. There are also commie planeskis which try to shoot you down and try kamikaze tactics when that fails (if it does). Clever guns in those silos, they only blast you, not the opposition. I think that the idea of this screen is to blast the ports in the silos but there is a countdown on this game and I ran out of time and it was (iron) curtains for me.

A great game for arcade veterans and recently expelled British diplomats.