Take me on your MIGHTY WINGS TONIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!

Oh, how the 80’s warped our sense of reality. How blind we were to blatant signs of propaganda and cheap publicity! To think that such an awesome movie like ‘Top Gun’ actually lead so many people to enlist into the army to fly one of those badass fighter jets, do cool barrel rolls, and blow shit up with shiny MISSILES, all to the upbeat tune of the ‘Danger Zone’...only to end up waking up at 5:00 am to do mundane chores, get your underwear full of mud, and smell like a pig den all day (please notice that I did no military service, but I can relay some experiences from people who did). Did they at least give out those cool sunglasses? Just so...you know...I could wear them even during nighttime?

But seriously, I still have fond memories of Top Gun. You know, before Tom Cruise went batshit insane thanks to scientology, before Val Kilmer became some pompous ass (well, actually, I think he always was a pompous ass, but at least he did cool movies!), and before you knew Goose died (was that a spoiler? Oops!), this film was damn awesome. Now that I think of it...it didn’t actually feature many aerial dogfights and a lot of semi-naked men footage...but I guess that didn’t make you gay back then, did it? DID IT??

Oh, Tom Cruise, why did you have to become so 'glib'? Especially with that boyish charm of yours, and..................................NO!!!

And this is where this game comes into play...with about 5 times more action than the actual movie, and about half the fun, unfortunately. You will be greeted with a pretty accurate MIDI version of the main song from Top Gun (before I attained the movie soundtrack, I had to put in this game to get my fix of the Top Gun anthem), and after pressing Start, you blast off right into action!

Off into the wild blue yonder......and spending what is left of our gas. HOORAY!

Uhhh.... I actually forgot what the story for this game was. Maybe something to do with the Russians and missiles and shit. You know, back in the 80’s, it was all about those goddamn Russians. Fuckin’ commies, red suits, big bad blonde bastards, and lots and lots of snow. Who would think that this very same country gave us things like T.A.T.U., Maria Sharapova, and vodka? Oooh, from Russia with love indeed! Anyway, yeah, I guess that’s what this game (and part of the movie) was based on. But it doesn’t matter, since the story never develops anyway. You just pilot a fighter jet, take to the skies, and blow shit up. Need more explanation? The U.S. Army would probably say there’s more to that, but they’re not in this goddamn game, now are they?

Before any stage, you are given a choice of missiles. Hound missiles are the weakest, but you get 40 of those babies, while Tiger missiles are the strongest, but you only get 10 of those. I honestly prefer the safe choice and go for the Wolf missiles (you get 20 of those), but considering that you shouldn’t waste your time firing missiles at enemy jets or anything else but the bosses, maybe Tiger missiles aren’t a bad choice after all.

The flight panel may seem all complicated and stuff, but all you need to look out for is the radar, your energy meter right below the radar, and the fuel meter that is on the bottom left. The energy meter decreases about 3 bars whenever you get shot by enemy gunfire (which means you can take about 4 hits before going boom-boom), but missiles mean INSTANT DEATH! Considering you can never replenish the energy meter in-stage, you should avoid head-to-head confrontations whenever you can (more on that later). The fuel gauge acts like a timer in this game, as several events occur when the meter reaches a certain level (such as when to refuel, when to fight a boss, or when to land).

The first thing going against this game is that it is HELLA short. There are only 4 levels of action, with the first stage merely being a training scene (but you still get to blow planes up, har har!). It will take you a bit more than 5 minutes to complete each stage, which means you can potentially finish this game in about 30 minutes more or less. But, OH NO! That is not the game’s main flaw, no siree! I’ll get to the most annoying sections later on, but here let’s just focus on the basis of combat.

The B button works to fire your machine gun, and you can fire that as much as you want (guess the army spends a lot on infinite ammo), while the A button allows you to fire the missiles, but you must first lock on the enemy to fire them. The control pad obviously moves the jet, but in the inverse way that you may expect (pressing down makes you go up, pressing up makes you go down). Really, there should no problem...during flying, of course....

Things go without a hitch by the time stage 1 starts. Enemy bogeys that come from behind are easy targets since they never attack, but jets that come from the front will not hesitate in doing just that. One tactic that will help you a lot is to take for the skies when you see gunfire or missiles coming right at ya. Seriously, just peek upwards for a second or two, and when you come back down, any incoming gunfire will have mysteriously vanished. Sometimes some missiles may make a case in chasing you, in which situation, you must fire it down before it blows your ass up.

During some situations, you will notice that an enemy bogey has locked you on from behind. You gotta free yourself from this scenario, or risk getting taken down. Just move the control pad to one side, and then to the other to break free from the targeting. Curiously enough, once you are under targeting, incoming enemies don’t attack at all, which is more or less a break in some occasions (a true breather during boss battles, for sure). Once you have all these basics mastered by the time stage 1 ends, you will come to the game’s very first terribly annoying feature: landing the goddamn thing!

If you ever watched the ‘Angry Nintendo Nerd’ videos somewhere, you might already know what this is all about. Basically, you have a set amount of time to level your plane so that it can land appropiately on the incoming aircraft carrier. The radar gets replaced by an image of your plane and the direction it is taking, as the instructions start flashing at the very top. The left/right/down/up part should be no problem, but now what you have to take into consideration, is your jet’s own speed. The buttons, instead of firing weapons, are now dedicated exclusively to either accelerating or braking the plane. The whole problem is that instructions change every second, and it gets VERY confusing after only a while. RIGHT gets inmediately swapped by SPEED DOWN which in turn gets replaced by UP very often. It’s kinda like learning to drive with your parents. It gets you VERY tense after a while. Aaaaaaand...if you end up NOT being able to land the plane appropiately, you end up crashing a million-dollar fighter jet into the ocean...and losing a life in the attempt. Good trade-off after surviving grueling dogfights, doncha think?

Thank God I have the millions - AND MILLIONS - of taxpayers to back up for my dumbassery. GOD BLESS AMERICA! Where being an uncoordinated fuck actually pays off!

If you thought landing was a chore to behold, you might as well kill yourself now knowing that there is ANOTHER segment which pretty much mimics the very same scenario. This happens starting from stage 2 and onwards, when your fuel gauge starts getting empty, and the radar commands you to press Start in order to ask for a refuel. Of course, instead of going to the next Shell like NORMAL people piloting fighter jets would do, you receive assistance in mid-air by a fuel plane, who apparently has a breeze flying through enemy-infested skies unlike you (so maybe the next time I’ll get to fly a fuel plane and do boring stuff like making other jets feel miserable for not getting gas and not being attacked at the same time).

Anyway, the same instructions for landing will appear here as you attempt to get that damn snozzle to connect...err...wherever the jet has the pumper, I guess. Fortunately, the radar gets replaced by an image of the snozzle and your jet for further reference (the snozzle also glows red when you’re not ‘in the zone’ so it’s easier to know what you’re doing wrong), but it doesn’t get any easier with all the damn instructions showing up. If you fail to connect in a certain amount of time, the fuel plane finds it easy enough to just dump your sorry ass in mid-air and fly away like the cold-ass son of a bitch they are (remember...gas prices are pretty high these days, so they can’t afford to waste any time on your sorry uncoordinated ass), and you are left to die on your lonesome for what remains of the stage (which gives you about...oh...maybe a minute at best). I’m having a hard time conceiving why doing mundane flight shit is twice as hard than actually fighting other jets in deadly combat? I don’t get it!

This is probably the closest you can get to a point-blank shot...yet the game's moral ethics will not allow you to take down your own ship. HUMBUG!

Also starting from stage 2, you will have to start looking down below along with looking at the skies for incoming enemy attacks. Vehicles stationed at ground level will start to fire at your jet, and even launch multiple missile attacks! Thing is, you can’t REALLY make out what the fuck is firing at you in the first place. All you manage to see is small black pixels going fuckin’ nuts and launching missiles and shit. I even found myself bold enough to look downward to see what kind of fucktard carried such impressive firepower...but even upon closer inspection (and the game’s laughable zoom-in feature) you can never make out what are those small dots of doom. I will just assume they are mega-deadly...robots of...death that carry out such harassment.

In any case, you can pay no mind to whatever lurks down below. As soon as you see incoming “pixels of death” appear on the ground and start firing, just press down for a second or two, and then get back to neutral. VOILA! Both the pixels of doom and the gunfire disappear, thanks to the unexplainable NES magic. You may have to fly higher to avoid missiles since they are more pesky, but by doing this simple strategy, you can fly the friendly skies at any time. Hell, maybe it’s wrong to say this, but you can also do this with even enemy bogeys! I swear, you can breeze through stages just by pressing down, aim for the stars, and just focus on getting off enemy targets. Don’t you love being such a pussy and just fly high and above all your troubles?

Like I said, the terrains vary between stages starting from stage 2. The second mission takes you to sea in search of an aircraft carrier, mission 3 takes place more at ground level looking for an enemy base, and mission 4 virtually mixes all the other 3 missions. The first boss is an enemy aircraft carrier (which suspiciously looks like your own carrier), the third boss is an enemy base (which looks more like 3 tents and a watchpost), and the final boss is an enemy shuttle that hasn’t even be launched yet. The bosses also have the very same strategy: first they appear to be far away, but gradually start zooming in. All they do is shoot waves of gunfire and fire up to 3 missiles at the same time. Some enemy aircraft also appears, although mostly they just divert attention and don’t seriously attack. Just pump the things with missiles and you should be fine by doing the “fly to the skies” strategy.

Probably the poor pilot schmuck will be angry that he didn't get a closer shot, but why bother when you can have a nice view of a shiny F-14 fighter jet? Huh? HUH?!

Although not as complex as other flight simulators could be, Top Gun turns into a headache in a hurry. It’s pretty ludicrous to conceive that you can virtually never lose a life while you’re in the air and fending off deadly enemy artillery only to die in flames by crashing and burning by your own hand doing rather trivial stuff. Seriously, the landing/refueling segments kill this game straight up. It’s completely stupid to think that things that exist to benefit you will actually be your deadliest enemies! I tend to feel more inclined towards shooting down my own carrier and fuel plane than enemy bogeys! At least shooting THEM down is a lot more simple than doing the whole “Up-right-left-left-speed up-down-up-up” thingy.

The game’s length also doesn’t help matters, either. With just 4 stages to play through, the novelty wears off kinda quick. Enemy aircraft looks pretty detailed, and the bosses look pretty mean once they zoom-in close enough, although like I said, the detail on the enemy artillery that is located on ground level leaves a LOT to be desired, but can kill you quickly all the same. Watching the movie is a lot more exciting than playing this annoying little trip. Maybe it’s even worth going a little gay than having to practice your landing for the 3738292th time.

Oh, Maverick, you can fly ME into the danger zone any day of the week. SWOON!

PLAYIN’ WITH THE BOYS!