The Year, 1991. Not content with the defeat of Suddam Hussein on the battlefields of Iraq, President George H.W. Bush Snr makes a phone call to Trip Hawkins, president of games producer Electronic Arts, briefing him with an important, top secret mission. The task: To create a video game documenting the victory of the United States in the Gulf. That way, twenty years or so in the future, folk will remember ‘what went down’, and not think that Desert Storm was a fictitious movie sequel to Twister or Lord of the Rings. With a determined solemnity Trip Hawkins puts down the red phone in his office and then makes plans to produce the best damn video game he can. A few short months later a legend named Desert Strike was born, and released on the Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive. Most people agreed that it was rather good.
So, who are the Baddies?
If the developers were given a brief of: “funnier version of Saddam Hussein, make him look as cool as possible” then they absolutely knocked it out of the park. Saddam Husse… I mean General Kilbaba, a name only a couple of letters away from ‘General kill babies’, provides comedic interludes covering the machinations of the bad guys throughout the game. Kilbaba gets increasingly upset and frustrated as the missions progress, which I think is an entirely reasonable reaction given that a single enemy helicopter was cutting his entire army, navy and air force to ribbons.
In the time-honoured tradition of ‘bad guys dressing better’, check out that aviators, beret and moustacho-beard combo! Kilbaba features in one of the best (and certainly funniest) cut scene sequences ever to grace the Mega Drive.
Top bad-ass moments
From baddies to badassery, there is an awful lot to be found within Desert Strike. But where to start?
Search and Rescue for the Downed Pilot
I honestly can’t say how advanced this felt back in the early 90s, when nearly every scenario in any other game at that time was ‘shoot it’, ‘jump on its head’ or ‘fuck it’. Not only this, but the developers went into full A+ merit mode: Not only did you got a points bonus if you destroyed the downed F15 aircraft, to stop the advanced tech falling into enemy hands, but the pilot himself could then join you as a co-pilot on subsequent missions. Very cool.
Gunning down UN peacemakers and camera crew
This helps reduce anti-war views back home as they’re then not able to relay negative news of soldiers in coffins and stuff - not sure if this is really the story, but I like to add a darker, Oliver Stone-esque narrative to any games I play, and have Creedence Clearwater Revival playing in the background as I mow down the civilians while crying. I’m not sure if you’re actually meant to do this, but as an 11-year old it felt like the correct and moral course of action.
Launch hellfire missiles at garbage trucks
Who hasn’t got this on their bucket list? Knowing that the encroaching enemy forces are closing in, Kilbaba has taken to hiding the nasty weapons in garbage trucks. First, identify the correct vehicles, then launch a missile up their tail-pipe. A few of them will be just genuine, regular dudes, trying to pick up rubbish (and you’ll fail the mission if you blow lots of them up indiscriminately) but I normally blow up one or two just because I have that level of power and can choose who lives and who dies.
Maybe not so much ‘bad-ass’ as ‘sunshine smile & incredibly well-dentured-ass’
We surely can’t write about this game without mentioning the shower scene in Top Gun, which this carefully cropped image has been taken from. 6 minutes 27 seconds of laughing and giggling as fellow pilots chase Maverick around the shower room, trying to whip his exposed botty with rolled up towels, in a scene now regarded by Quentin Tarantino as ‘homo-erotic’. Ends with the death of Goose.
Check out my Hardware
Something wholesome in a simpler time: Mom's apple pie, taking your dog Shep out for a walk on a cold and blustery autumnal morning, invading a foreign country under dubious pretenses and gunning down poor, ill-equipped conscripts using advanced military hardware.
And what some hardware!
Pea Shooter. This is technically meant to be a bad-ass, high-velocity machine gun of the sort that in real life probably isn’t particularly pleasant to be shot by. In the game, it takes several shots from this weapon to take out annoying infantry dudes, a lot more to take out a vehicle, and don’t waste your time with anything tougher. Makes a nice noise.
Hydra missiles. An excellent fire rate means you can take out most baddies before they open fire themselves, making it the most useful weapon in the Apache’s arsenal.
Keep an eye on your ammo counter, and beware the dead-man’s click which always seems to come at the least opportune time!
Hellfire missiles. Presumably, you wouldn’t be able to call missiles 'Hellfires' without them being pretty powerful, and powerful indeed they are (I guess you could name them ironically as ‘puffball’ or ‘flower kitten missiles’ or something)?
Unfortunately you can only carry 9 of them with a full load, but a couple of these fired and the enemy is toast.
It should be noted that you get minus scores for shooting civilians, unlike in most shoot-em-ups where you are just encouraged to follow the historically accurate method of killing indiscriminately and letting God judge his own. Pro tip: the small people that sometimes appear in villages clothed in black are local Bedouin folk, not ninjas, and you'll get a minus score for annihilating them with hellfire missiles.
The game is smart enough to employ friendly-fire controls and to stop you from shooting your own carrier as you approach it to land; something 98% of all players would have tried immediately, resulting in a game over screen.
Along for the ride
Being complex bits of kit the AH-64 Apache requires someone to fly it and also another that has the task (and probably the more fun job) of blowing stuff up.
The game gives you a choice:
These seem to be (and this is serious - no joke):
1) Expert pilot with thousands of hours of flight experience
2) Pilot who stays calm under fire and is an expert with a winch
3) Pilot that babbles incoherently in an unknown tongue, randomly fires hellfire missiles and tries to garrote you with some piano wire
Top Helicopters on Celluloid
It's quite possible the developers of Desert Strike had seen one of these films or shows and been inspired by them to create the game. Or possibly not, but anyway here are some cool helicopters.
Airwolf TV Series
The show that had the absolute coolest theme music and completely enraptured me as a kid. Jan-Michael Vincent as the awesomely named Stringfellow Hawke flew the titular helicopter, while his mentor the ancient (even then!) Ernest Borgnine beat the shit out of anyone in his way. Probably did a lot for sales of aviator sunglasses!
Helicopter Chase sequence in Rat Race
Unless you’re a stoner sat munching on some Cheetos on a couch, and there is nothing wrong at all with that life-style, the movie itself (filmed in 2001, as a kind of re-imagining of comedy classic “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World") hasn’t aged particularly well. But, there is one scene that it’s absolutely worth watching it for, and that’s where a ‘spurned’ Amy Smart takes a helicopter after boyfriend cheater Dean Cain. Apparently the sequence won awards for the stunt flying (it was all done for real!) and it’s easy to see why.
Rambo 3
With mighty pecks and thighs matched only by the strength of his greasy mullet, Sly Stallone fights alongside the heroic Taliban (erm..) to take out the evil Soviet invaders. Features a scene where Stallone shoots down a helicopter with an explosive bow and arrow, a scene worth watching just for the guy in the helicopter’s last moment reaction of realising the ridiculous way in which he is about to die. The helicopter features in this film wasn’t an actual Soviet model (as the US and Russians weren’t doing swapsies back then) but a modified French Puma model, rivet-counting fans! Stallone follows up this scene by ramming another helicopter out of the sky in a tank.
Harrier Jumpjet in True Lies.
Urgghhh… It hovers on the spot, and does Helicopter stuff, that close enough for you? OK? Fuck you. Arnie dispatches renowned British thespian Art Malik with the words “you’re fired” (which doesn’t really make sense, as he was a terrorist and definitely not working for Arnie or the CIA, but we’ll let that go) before launching a missile into a helicopter carrying terrorist goons. This scene followed up possibly one of the greatest car chases, greatest horse chases (!) and Charlton Heston sporting an eye patch (!) If you haven’t seen this film already, make sure you do as it’s a work of majesty.
What has this got to do with Desert Strike on the Mega Drive? Absolutely nothing, but it represents a high point of cinema and is important to study. This GIF was from Lasertimepodcast.com, check them out!
Shittiest Helicopters on Celluloid
Budgie the Little Helicopter
As well as being massively shit in its own right, Budgie was designed by Sarah Ferguson (yes that one – Duchess of York and former wife of Prince Andrew). I made a few attempts at writing some jokes about Budgie and Prince Andrew (there are some very low hanging fruit there), but the fact that, at the time of writing, people have walked away from that shit scott-free and unpunished, just on account of their wealth and connections, leaves a sickening feeling and sour taste in the mouth. I'll spoil the ending for you: Budgie gets shot down by a surface to air missile while drug running over the Nicaraguan border and the white bear thing in the back seat gets decapitated by a spinning rotorblade.
An officer, representative of real-life Desert Storm general Norman “storming Norman” Schwarzkopf, gives a pre-mission brief to folk-rock duo Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel
Review - Filbert Wang
Game development always moves forward. Designers are constantly introducing new ideas and refining existing ones, thinking of new ways to entertain baying consumers. As such, although the features of Desert Strike might feel quite modest when compared to some modern standards, it’s very hard to convey the massive impact that the game caused back in 1992 upon its release and the step forward it represented. While other games had included individual elements found within Desert Strike, none had managed to combine all of them into such a well-designed, beautifully constructed package: the ability to carry out missions in any order you choose (take out the power station first and enemy responsiveness and destructive capacity is reduced!), the resource management elements, the need to approach enemies strategically to take advantage of their weak spot (going in all guns blazing was a quick way to see the wrecked Apache animation!) all combined into one hell of a game. Even the setting of the Gulf, which was understandably controversial given the recent war, added a sense of gravitas and maturity to the experience; for a Western audience at least, no longer were you asked to play as a weird animated Japanese witch with massive boobs firing explosive carrots at approaching cartoon flying pig assholes for a high score, you were taking part in a special ops military mission in the Persian Gulf. This was a lot more relatable to most gamers and instantly drew them in (with apologies to any well-endowed, pig asshole-hating witches reading this).
And the best part is that, even 30 years later, the game still plays extraordinarily well. Shooters often live and die based on their control method and responsiveness, and fortunately Desert Strike nails it like a guided missile flying up the exhaust pipe of an old Toyota pickup truck, with an excellent sense of control and inertia. The camera is ‘intelligent’ too, more often than not panning out to view the area in front of your ‘copter.
And it’s perhaps because of this control method that you won’t bemoan the sometimes brutal difficulty level; your Apache getting blown from the sky by mobile SAM units (which you will absolutely learn to hate and fear!) prompting you to pick up the controller and have another go. It's always the sign of a great game that even when being murdered violently the game is fun, and certainly in this reviewers case there was no anguished face streaked with tears. As well as this, the strategic and resource management element, in terms of trying to plan your fuel expenditure and not use all of your rockets in one go, really makes you think about what you are doing. Finally, the graphics and sound, while exceptional back in the early 90s, are still perfectly acceptable and won’t impact your enjoyment of the game in any way. There really is no argument for not already owning this game, but if you are one of the few that do not, make sure you pick up a copy!
“For the last time, where did you put the cassette tape containing favourite 80s songs that are new and played all the time in this part of the world?”
Arms Deal
Desert Strike was a massive critical and commercial success for Electronic Arts on both the Mega Drive and Super Nintendo, selling a shit-ton of copies. As such, its relatively easy to get hold of it for relatively few Dinah. Cartridge-only copies start from about £5 for the Mega Drive, and you should be able to get a boxed copy with instructions for about £12-15.
In terms of which 16-bit version to buy, I will admit to having never played the SNES version. Watching video online there looks to be very little difference between the two. Apparently the ‘dipping person in hot tub’ torture scene is not present in the Nintendo version, so you’ll need to buy Sega’s version if animated 16-bit S&M scenes are your thing.
The Absolutely stunning box art for the game; considering the low price for a complete and boxed copy, treat yourself and improve the look of your games shelf.
Image courtesy of SegaRetro.com
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