Air-Strike 42
Release type: Shareware
Release date: 9/16/1992
Levels: 5
Author: Sherwood Forest
Registration bonus: Free game + current catalog
Registration price: $15
Related games: none
Of all the attempts at a scrolling shooter within the Game-Maker engine, Air-Strike 42 is one of the least successful -- along with Sherwood's own Rocket Fighter. There are strong elements, like the fast vertical action and some of the background detail, but there seems to be little actual design going on and the objectives are always unclear.
You shoot bullets, and drop a limited number of bombs. You get extra points for plowing into bunkers and bridges, to blow them up. As usual for a Sherwood game, movement and attacking are limited, and enemies tend to come out of nowhere quickly.
Air-Strike 42 is not an easy game to play, and because of the odd mechanics it's not an easy game to figure out. Paradoxically, that confusion may be one of it stronger suits; in some ways it's reminiscent of a random third-rate NES game that you might have bought sight unseen in the late 1980s. You're convinced that it makes sense, but you just can't figure out what it wants from you. In trying to figure it out, your mind opens to many strange and wonderful possibilities.
Here's another positive, or at least a nominally engaging, curio. The maps are full maps. Unlike most shooters, movement isn't contained to a narrow corridor. Rather, every tile is used. You've got a whole auto-repeating environment to explore. Granted, of the six maps, two are duplicates with slightly different enemy position -- and the scale of the maps, combined with unclear goals, means that even if you destroy every enemy on a given map you likely will wander for ages, waiting to randomly transport to the next level.
Contents
Story
Air-Strike 42 is a World War II flight game. You must fly your plane through various theatres of war from Germany to the Mediterranean Sea, over North Africa and finally to the Japanese area for confrontations with zeros and storm dragons. You must evade the planes, as well as surface artillery both in the water as well as the land.
Flying over cities, and battleships will cause the targets below to catch on fire and blow up.
You will travel from air strip to airstrip and carrier as you travel through various levels of fighting.
Instructions
You start out in Germany as you travel the various areas of the war. The arrow keys left and right move your plane in that direction. The down arrow will cause you to "hover". The corresponding positions on the joystick will have the same effect.
You are armed with two weapons: bullets and bombs. You have an unlimited supply of bullets, which you shoot by pressing the spacebar.
Bombs are more powerful, and are dropped by pushing the 'B' key, but you only have 100 of them.
You gain points by shooting planes down and blowing up boats and cities. This is done by flying over the target. Look for the landing strips, because all take-offs and landings are all done by flying over strips and aircraft carriers.
Credits
Air-Strike 42 is a creation from the guys at Sherwood Forest Software. We are Rob Sherwood: owner, developer, boss, and all around nice guy, and Dan Whalen: art director, creative consultant, and the guy with the longer hair, and the rest of the lunatic fringe we try these things out on, before we send them out to the unsuspecting public.
Availability
Available on several shareware compilation CD-ROMs, including ShareWare Heaven #2 (1993).
Archive history
Air-Strike 42 was added to the archive somewhere between July 25 and September 23, 2010. It was located on the ShareWare Heaven #2 CD-ROM, as hosted on cd.archive.org (see #Availability), during ongoing research for the Game-Maker Archive article series at DIYGamer.
Links
Interviews / Articles
Listings
Misc. Links
Downloads
- Air-Strike 42 (129.3 kB)
- Level 1 map (126.1 kB)
- Level 2 map (139.0 kB)
- Level 3 map (56.1 kB)
- Level 4 map (136.9 kB)
- Level 5 map (98.3 kB)
- Level 6 map (55.5 kB)
