I've just beaten Captain Skyhawk, a scrolling shooter with vehicular combat, developed by Rare (Battletoads, Conker's Bad Fur Day & Sea of Thieves) and released for the NES in June 1990. It was also released for Arcade machines.
In this game, you are Captain Skyhawk, pilot of the plane "F-14VTS" and have to fight back against an on-going alien invasion. You never really see any aliens, nor do their spaceships and ground weaponry look very alien. If the game wouldn't have told me, I would have thought that we're simply fighting human terrorists or shooting up space stations for the fun of it. This is where I always crack up when I read reviewers of the time try to hype up the game's setting before diving into the gameplay. The Good Witch for GamePro Magazine's 13th Issue for example writes: "Imagine the ultimate parasites, creatures that suck the very life out of Earth and leave her a useless hulk spinning in space. This is the problem you, as Captain Skyhawk, must face." And then it's just you flying over 3D terrain and shooting at very normal looking planes and ground vehicles. Of course I admire the effort of trying to immerse potential players from the start and I doubt I would have done it differently back in the day, but that doesn't make it less funny to me reading it today, but in a good way.
This game is a vertical scrolling shooter and you fly around mountainous 3D terrain and try to dodge both enemy projectiles (which all look like the same "ninja star"-esque projectile) and the mountains off to the sides. There are 9 levels of that, with three different types of goals. In between, you have a little mini game where you have to line up your plane to be able to dock it perfectly into your station, plus a 2D mini level where you look at your plane from the rear, dodge incoming bombs and shoot up enemy ships that otherwise don't offer any resistance to gain some bonus points, which are then used to buy equipment at your station.
The gameplay loop is enjoyable, and especially the more fast paced segments were really fun, but what this game offers is limited, and it's not a looker (which is fine) nor a "hearer" (which was not fine).
____________
STORYTELLING
Within the video game, there is the littlest of environmental storytelling and that's it. And even that doesn't occur until the final objective of the game. Apart from that, there is no mention of where this game is set in, what your ultimate goal is or who you are. It just says "Alien Fleet destroyed" when you beat the game.
The real plot you will find in the game's manual, but apart from the final objective, it doesn't really translate to the full game. If you don't care for a story in a scrolling shooter like this, this is a non-issue, and I would guess that most of you do only care about the gameplay and about pretty much anything but the story. Still, it is worth mentioning that the game has no storytelling.
According to the manual, Aliens have invaded Earth and have built bases to drain Earth's energy. The end goal is to use this energy as fuel to vaporize Earth with a laser blast. You have to stop them by destroying their stations on Earth and ultimately destroying their space station.
As I mentioned, the ludonarrative dissonance makes the choice of an alien invasion story an odd one but since it is barely present, I didn't really think about it much further than that.
GAMEPLAY
You control a plane over simulated 3D Terrain. You can move your plane from side-to-side whilst the display scrolls vertically at an automated speed. You can also adjust your plane's altitude, and I found that reaching the highest possible level was the best strategy in order to avoid crashing into mountains. There doesn't really seem to be a reason to fly low. You can't crash into enemy planes or anything else besides those mountains that either are small and placed in the middle of an area or stretch out from the sides and at certain points only leave a very small opening for your plane to fit through.
In this vertically scrolling 3D part of the game, you use your "Cannon" to shoot. I found myself holding the A-Button throughout a level since your ammo is unlimited and enemies can show up at a moment's notice. There are also three other weapon types that you can stock up on whenever you finish a mission and manage to dock into your station.
There are "Phoenix Air Intercept Missiles" for air-to-air combat and "Maverick Air-to-Ground Missiles" and "Hawk Bombs" for air-to-ground combat. Over time you also get upgrades to your Cannon to make it fire quicker.
Enemies fire back with the same projectile pretty much. It's a small gray-and-white colored square shape and only one of these is fired individually every few seconds. Unfortunately, its effects are devastating, as one hit destroys your "specially designed plane" that was made specifically to combat the aliens. These projectiles and their hit boxes were a mystery to me throughout, as I never really could accurately say when it would hit my plane when I would fly past it and when it wouldn't. Figuring that out and maneuvering past it is really the key to success in this game, which apart from the final boss is pretty straightforward otherwise.
There are 9 total missions and they all go pretty similarly. There is the vertical scrolling section first, then a 2D section where you shoot down enemy planes to collect extra points and a docking mini game. The vertical scrolling section has one of three goals until the final missions: (1) Destroy enemy station, where you have to destroy four of its circled bases to make it explode, (2) Find scientist, where you have to destroy a prison holding a scientist in similar fashion to free him and grab some plane upgrades and (3) Drop supplies, where you have to drop supplies into holes that are placed somewhere in the map. You have to do that two times to win the mission.
The 2D section has the ships come from out of screen and become smaller as seconds pass until they disappear. If you hit them, you get points, if you don't, you don't get points. There are only bombs to dodge, which sometimes the ships carry with them. And if they spawn right where you are, you can be hit with it without even seeing the bomb, which results in instant-death. Annoying.
Finally, there is the docking mini game. There is a very small hole in a docking station in front of you. You have to align your plane on its level, wait for the right moment and press B to see a little animation where your plane circles toward the station. If you aligned it correctly, you enter the station and progress with the game. You can buy ammo there. If you fail, you crash against the station and lose a life. It's not really difficult once you understand it but I guess it's there.
There are 3 continues throughout the game, so if you're playing this game without save states, it can be tough to beat and will be pretty frustrating. If you use save states like me, it'll still be frustrating but becomes much more beatable until the final boss, which took me so many tries and almost made me rage.
Controls of the plane where alright but only because you really didn't have too much to do. Dodge a bullet if you can and then just fly from west-to-east whilst shooting your cannons, pretty straightforward throughout. Some missions for some reason had your plane flying 3x the normal speed for some reason, which meant having to somehow manage to anticipate where those valleys between the two mountains would show up, because otherwise you'd crash to your death. That was frustrating but at the same time, if you did it right, these missions would flow really well.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. The music was good, nice to listen to, no complaints there. But the sound design was bad. The sound of the cannons firing was annoying and nothing cannon-like, so I'm not sure why each individual bullet you fired got its own sound, especially when having to auto-fire was almost a necessity. The sound of hitting enemies was unpleasant as well. There are some good parts about it, like the sound of enemy planes being destroyed or the sound in the 2D sections of far-away planes approaching. But overall, it wasn't good to listen to. Music would only play during boss fights or in the menu.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
Maps were all the same (more on that in "Atmosphere") and at no point did it feel like I was fighting aliens and their advanced technology. I've seen some comments on YT videos saying that "the game is one of the best graphically for the NES", but I don't really see it, it just looked bland and very simple.
ATMOSPHERE
I'd say the 2D sections were the ones that made me feel the most like I was flying a plane in the sky. Dodging bombs, hearing enemy planes approach from a distance and having to align just right to destroy them was an extremely simple task truth be told, but it was still able to draw me in the most. The docking mini game added a little bit to the immersion as well I guess, but the 3D vertical scrolling section just didn't make me feel like I was fighting back against an alien invasion in this super-plane that was specifically constructed to fight them. There was no music playing, the sound design was mostly bad and it was enough for one tiny projectile to kill me and destroy the flow of the attempt.
CONTENT
There are 9 same-y missions and very little variety to approach them. It doesn't have filler however and having less missions works in the game's favor. I'd definitely rather have 9 than 18 missions if they are going to be similar. There still is a lack of content overall.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
The 9 missions almost all play out exactly the same. The only ones I would call slightly different are the "supply drop" missions, which have no boss fight but rather just require you to time the drop of a package correctly. Other than that, you'll be doing the same thing over 9 missions in maps that pretty much are all the same. The only difference is that the placement of environmental obstacles is likely slightly different with each and that maps can have different colors. The terrain does only carry one (1) color (green or blue or orange), but it does change from mission to mission.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
I have never really played scrolling vehicular combat shooters like this one growing up, so this is almost entirely a foreign genre to me. Therefore I can't really judge this, but reviews I have read of the time don't mention this game excelling at any part or moving the needle in any way either. There is also no story component, very little adjustments you can make to your plane, the same maps with a different one-color terrain and very straightforward action.
REPLAYABILITY
There isn't really any variety here, so the only reason for replaying this after winning would be to beat your high score, which is as the devs intended it I'd assume.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL
It's the first game of this type I've played in probably 15 years, and even then I might have tried a vertical scrolling shooter with vehicular combat once or twice, so I have little experience to compare this to other similar games. On its own, it doesn't really seem to do anything particularly well, but its core gameplay loop and the challenge it provides is fun enough for a couple hours, if you're into this genre of games. But all of its features are very basic, which maybe is how these games were back then. I could also see this being more feature-poor than games that came out before or shortly after it, that is still be found out in the process of this project of mine.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- The Good Witch for GamePro Issue 13 (Aug 90): "Captain Skyhawk features a good combination of different game action [...]. Although the shoot-em-up action may not be challenging enough to keep an expert gamer busy for long, it's more than tough enough for the average player"
- ? for Nintendo Power Issue 16 (September-October 90): "Each level on this action packed flight simulation is fun and challenging"
In this game, you are Captain Skyhawk, pilot of the plane "F-14VTS" and have to fight back against an on-going alien invasion. You never really see any aliens, nor do their spaceships and ground weaponry look very alien. If the game wouldn't have told me, I would have thought that we're simply fighting human terrorists or shooting up space stations for the fun of it. This is where I always crack up when I read reviewers of the time try to hype up the game's setting before diving into the gameplay. The Good Witch for GamePro Magazine's 13th Issue for example writes: "Imagine the ultimate parasites, creatures that suck the very life out of Earth and leave her a useless hulk spinning in space. This is the problem you, as Captain Skyhawk, must face." And then it's just you flying over 3D terrain and shooting at very normal looking planes and ground vehicles. Of course I admire the effort of trying to immerse potential players from the start and I doubt I would have done it differently back in the day, but that doesn't make it less funny to me reading it today, but in a good way.
This game is a vertical scrolling shooter and you fly around mountainous 3D terrain and try to dodge both enemy projectiles (which all look like the same "ninja star"-esque projectile) and the mountains off to the sides. There are 9 levels of that, with three different types of goals. In between, you have a little mini game where you have to line up your plane to be able to dock it perfectly into your station, plus a 2D mini level where you look at your plane from the rear, dodge incoming bombs and shoot up enemy ships that otherwise don't offer any resistance to gain some bonus points, which are then used to buy equipment at your station.
The gameplay loop is enjoyable, and especially the more fast paced segments were really fun, but what this game offers is limited, and it's not a looker (which is fine) nor a "hearer" (which was not fine).
____________
STORYTELLING
Within the video game, there is the littlest of environmental storytelling and that's it. And even that doesn't occur until the final objective of the game. Apart from that, there is no mention of where this game is set in, what your ultimate goal is or who you are. It just says "Alien Fleet destroyed" when you beat the game.
The real plot you will find in the game's manual, but apart from the final objective, it doesn't really translate to the full game. If you don't care for a story in a scrolling shooter like this, this is a non-issue, and I would guess that most of you do only care about the gameplay and about pretty much anything but the story. Still, it is worth mentioning that the game has no storytelling.
According to the manual, Aliens have invaded Earth and have built bases to drain Earth's energy. The end goal is to use this energy as fuel to vaporize Earth with a laser blast. You have to stop them by destroying their stations on Earth and ultimately destroying their space station.
As I mentioned, the ludonarrative dissonance makes the choice of an alien invasion story an odd one but since it is barely present, I didn't really think about it much further than that.
GAMEPLAY
You control a plane over simulated 3D Terrain. You can move your plane from side-to-side whilst the display scrolls vertically at an automated speed. You can also adjust your plane's altitude, and I found that reaching the highest possible level was the best strategy in order to avoid crashing into mountains. There doesn't really seem to be a reason to fly low. You can't crash into enemy planes or anything else besides those mountains that either are small and placed in the middle of an area or stretch out from the sides and at certain points only leave a very small opening for your plane to fit through.
In this vertically scrolling 3D part of the game, you use your "Cannon" to shoot. I found myself holding the A-Button throughout a level since your ammo is unlimited and enemies can show up at a moment's notice. There are also three other weapon types that you can stock up on whenever you finish a mission and manage to dock into your station.
There are "Phoenix Air Intercept Missiles" for air-to-air combat and "Maverick Air-to-Ground Missiles" and "Hawk Bombs" for air-to-ground combat. Over time you also get upgrades to your Cannon to make it fire quicker.
Enemies fire back with the same projectile pretty much. It's a small gray-and-white colored square shape and only one of these is fired individually every few seconds. Unfortunately, its effects are devastating, as one hit destroys your "specially designed plane" that was made specifically to combat the aliens. These projectiles and their hit boxes were a mystery to me throughout, as I never really could accurately say when it would hit my plane when I would fly past it and when it wouldn't. Figuring that out and maneuvering past it is really the key to success in this game, which apart from the final boss is pretty straightforward otherwise.
There are 9 total missions and they all go pretty similarly. There is the vertical scrolling section first, then a 2D section where you shoot down enemy planes to collect extra points and a docking mini game. The vertical scrolling section has one of three goals until the final missions: (1) Destroy enemy station, where you have to destroy four of its circled bases to make it explode, (2) Find scientist, where you have to destroy a prison holding a scientist in similar fashion to free him and grab some plane upgrades and (3) Drop supplies, where you have to drop supplies into holes that are placed somewhere in the map. You have to do that two times to win the mission.
The 2D section has the ships come from out of screen and become smaller as seconds pass until they disappear. If you hit them, you get points, if you don't, you don't get points. There are only bombs to dodge, which sometimes the ships carry with them. And if they spawn right where you are, you can be hit with it without even seeing the bomb, which results in instant-death. Annoying.
Finally, there is the docking mini game. There is a very small hole in a docking station in front of you. You have to align your plane on its level, wait for the right moment and press B to see a little animation where your plane circles toward the station. If you aligned it correctly, you enter the station and progress with the game. You can buy ammo there. If you fail, you crash against the station and lose a life. It's not really difficult once you understand it but I guess it's there.
There are 3 continues throughout the game, so if you're playing this game without save states, it can be tough to beat and will be pretty frustrating. If you use save states like me, it'll still be frustrating but becomes much more beatable until the final boss, which took me so many tries and almost made me rage.
Controls of the plane where alright but only because you really didn't have too much to do. Dodge a bullet if you can and then just fly from west-to-east whilst shooting your cannons, pretty straightforward throughout. Some missions for some reason had your plane flying 3x the normal speed for some reason, which meant having to somehow manage to anticipate where those valleys between the two mountains would show up, because otherwise you'd crash to your death. That was frustrating but at the same time, if you did it right, these missions would flow really well.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. The music was good, nice to listen to, no complaints there. But the sound design was bad. The sound of the cannons firing was annoying and nothing cannon-like, so I'm not sure why each individual bullet you fired got its own sound, especially when having to auto-fire was almost a necessity. The sound of hitting enemies was unpleasant as well. There are some good parts about it, like the sound of enemy planes being destroyed or the sound in the 2D sections of far-away planes approaching. But overall, it wasn't good to listen to. Music would only play during boss fights or in the menu.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
Maps were all the same (more on that in "Atmosphere") and at no point did it feel like I was fighting aliens and their advanced technology. I've seen some comments on YT videos saying that "the game is one of the best graphically for the NES", but I don't really see it, it just looked bland and very simple.
ATMOSPHERE
I'd say the 2D sections were the ones that made me feel the most like I was flying a plane in the sky. Dodging bombs, hearing enemy planes approach from a distance and having to align just right to destroy them was an extremely simple task truth be told, but it was still able to draw me in the most. The docking mini game added a little bit to the immersion as well I guess, but the 3D vertical scrolling section just didn't make me feel like I was fighting back against an alien invasion in this super-plane that was specifically constructed to fight them. There was no music playing, the sound design was mostly bad and it was enough for one tiny projectile to kill me and destroy the flow of the attempt.
CONTENT
There are 9 same-y missions and very little variety to approach them. It doesn't have filler however and having less missions works in the game's favor. I'd definitely rather have 9 than 18 missions if they are going to be similar. There still is a lack of content overall.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
The 9 missions almost all play out exactly the same. The only ones I would call slightly different are the "supply drop" missions, which have no boss fight but rather just require you to time the drop of a package correctly. Other than that, you'll be doing the same thing over 9 missions in maps that pretty much are all the same. The only difference is that the placement of environmental obstacles is likely slightly different with each and that maps can have different colors. The terrain does only carry one (1) color (green or blue or orange), but it does change from mission to mission.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
I have never really played scrolling vehicular combat shooters like this one growing up, so this is almost entirely a foreign genre to me. Therefore I can't really judge this, but reviews I have read of the time don't mention this game excelling at any part or moving the needle in any way either. There is also no story component, very little adjustments you can make to your plane, the same maps with a different one-color terrain and very straightforward action.
REPLAYABILITY
There isn't really any variety here, so the only reason for replaying this after winning would be to beat your high score, which is as the devs intended it I'd assume.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL
It's the first game of this type I've played in probably 15 years, and even then I might have tried a vertical scrolling shooter with vehicular combat once or twice, so I have little experience to compare this to other similar games. On its own, it doesn't really seem to do anything particularly well, but its core gameplay loop and the challenge it provides is fun enough for a couple hours, if you're into this genre of games. But all of its features are very basic, which maybe is how these games were back then. I could also see this being more feature-poor than games that came out before or shortly after it, that is still be found out in the process of this project of mine.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- The Good Witch for GamePro Issue 13 (Aug 90): "Captain Skyhawk features a good combination of different game action [...]. Although the shoot-em-up action may not be challenging enough to keep an expert gamer busy for long, it's more than tough enough for the average player"
- ? for Nintendo Power Issue 16 (September-October 90): "Each level on this action packed flight simulation is fun and challenging"
TheThirstyMage
7 months ago