Monday, July 4, 2011

Captain Skyhawk (NES Game)


Captain Skyhawk is a technologically impressive vertical shooter for the NES. I'm not normally the vertical shooter type, but this game is hard to ignore. It features polygon-ish graphics, and a couple different types of gameplay.

In the first gameplay style, you'll move your way across a green polygon-ish landscape as you blast enemies with a variety of weapons. The enemies explode nicely, sending shrapnel far and wide. The only issue with the  explosion animation is that the shrapnel, which can't hurt you, is sometimes indistinguishable from enemy projectiles, which can kill you. You also need to avoid the mountainsides, which can be perilous in the narrow canyons you fly through. At times the collision detection can be a little wonky, causing you to crash when you think you have a good distance from the canyon walls.

The second gameplay style is similar to games like Top Gun and Afterburner. You have a behind-the-plane view as you fly through the skies blasting enemy aircraft. As a matter of fact, these stages look almost indistinguishable from Afterburner. It's not a bad thing, but needed to be pointed out.

Anyway, I found Captain Skyhawk to be a little difficult. This is probably mainly due to the fact that I'm not a vertical shooter guy. Even with the difficulty, I still enjoyed this game quite a bit. The fact that you blast a lot of the same type of enemy over and over (a common fault with vertical shooters) has to knock this game down a peg or two, but it's still very good.

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