It is tough and you start out with a 2 hit health bar but it increases by 1 heart with each boss so picking the order of bosses is important. The main hall has a few secret doors that lead to rooms with powerups and 1ups which sort of makes up for its toughness. I completed this game a few years ago - without the game's helpful hands I would never have done it.
Desert Strike's pretty much a stone cold classic in my mind and for me it's the quintessential Megadrive game. I remember playing this turn about with mates back when it was a new game. Happy memories.
Same here, it's not aged particularly great and with a bit of patience and approaching from the right angles you can kinda cheat your way to victory to a certain extent.
It's iconic as fuck though, true classic of the era.
So I've been playing Desert strike abit and I'm pleasantly surprised in how well it's held up.
The visuals aren't anything to get excited about, they're functional and match the tone of the game.
The sound is missing music during gameplay leaving just the sfx to set the atmosphere. It could've benefited from some music kicking in when approaching targets and fire fights but maybe that's alot to ask.
Gameplay wise, the hooks still there for me. Swooping round a base and one shotting each enemy and not taking damage gives a great sense of satisfaction (as it's not bloody easy I can tell you), while managing fuel, ammo and your passenger load adds a sense of tactical nous.
There's plenty to do there in what could be considered an open world design and it plays really well. I'd certainly recommend going back to it and checking it out.
Look past the dated audio and whats left is still a great game.
Errrm, I'd give it an 8, maybe pushing a 9 out of 10.
Noted, thanks. I really wanted to like Jungle Strike in '93, nearly bought it but opted for something else. When I borrowed it I really struggled with the difficulty. Think I barely got up to the bike on mission 2, had to get passwords to see the stealth fighter.
I haven't got to the end yet. I've done the first two levels and they were tricky and took some time. I think the third level is the final one so I might tackle it some day.
I would've bought the Saturn Soviet Strike port, but the mags suggested the scrolling was a bit jerky on that one. I did buy Nuclear Strike when I bought a Playstation though. Initially I thought the lack of vehicle switching was a step backwards from the latter 16-bit days, but it was a very good game. Probably my favourite in the series. [*BURN HIM*].
There may well have been dodgy scrolling in Soviet Strike - didn't play it a lot and it was a long time ago when I was picking up whatever Saturn games I could - would have been when people were trading them in and the games were dirt cheap.
Played a bit of both this evening. Choplifter seems like a 'proper' game - very arcadey, gets tough pretty quickly. Controls quite well too, I could see myself enjoying a full save state numptyrun if I get time.
Desert Strike still hates me, I'm awful at it. It feels like it should have a strafe button. Managed to get to the third objective before running out of ammo and getting blown up. Helicopter sprite is quality, it's a very good looking game for 1992. Madman Hussain lives to fight another day, but I'll try another stage or two with passwords later in the week.
The strafe moves are tied to the hellfire missiles, and I didn't see anything around that but good news the game recognizes the difference between a quick press (which fires missiles) and a press+hold (strafes) so you don't have to fire a missile to start strafing.
Ha. I think it was called "jinking" instead of strafing ? That might have been just me - was a good while ago now.
My mate bought the official stick and I remember it controlling really well with that.
We used to love the sound it made when you had run out of missiles - you got a clicking sound - usually followed by an explosion as you were taken out.
Missed these last two posts for some reason. I'll try again, whoops. Only shut the Pi down recently though, played a bit more Choplifter instead. It's pretty basic for a SNES game, and I can't really tell how good it is now that I'm using save states so frequently, but I'm having fun saving little people and blowing up large boss sprites lacking in detail.
The was a game of the Amiga very similar to Choplifter called Apocalypse.
I only ever had a demo of the first level but I loved it, the helicopter handled a bit better than Choplifter which made a big difference.