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Preview  F-14 Tomcat
- By Mike Schneider [Editor In Chief]
E3 2001 Impressions:
Of the four Majesco GameBoy Advance games I played through at their booth, this one was the hardest for me to get into. It is definitely a pure flight shooting sim, with a strong emphasize on realism. You begin all missions by holding a few buttons, which allows you to take off. While in the air, at least in what I played, the entire environment basically consists of a blue ocean beneath you. Obviously, there wasn’t much of a wow factor within the environments. Your camera angle is within the cockpit, which as the screenshots on the side show, does sport a high level of detail. Moreover, you can switch to a view that allows you to see behind you, which also features some impressive graphics.
My main gripe with the game is that it is too hard to locate and track enemies. The environment I played basically had one or two enemies in it, tops, and the best I could do was get them to go across my screen for a nanosecond. I did not ever come close to destroying any enemies, which I find extremely unbelievable.
Hopefully some of the other missions sport more enemies, since F-14 Tomcat does sport a lot of potential. The mission briefings are fabulous and it has a good flight shooting feel – if the kink I described above can be worked out, I think this game will be a lot more enjoyable.
We’ll see what the future provides.
- Mike, 5.18.01
Majesco Sales Inc bought the rights to a SNES title Turn and Burn: No Fly Zone, and with the help of Virtuacraft, they look to bring about a very realistic dog fighting game.
The F-14 Tomcat, one of the most popular Naval aircrafts, will be used by the player through dozens of missions that take place over and around the Mediterranean Sea – missions ranging from destroying transport cargo aircraft, simply killing all off all enemies, as well as other such tasks. In later missions, there are ground targets you must eliminate too, such as tankers and oilrigs. Almost every mission has you trying to wipe out a certain number of bogies before allowing you to move on.
In addition, the end of every successful mission has you landing your F-14 Tomcat on your Naval Carrier. Botch that, and the whole mission ends up a failure. In the SNES Turn and Burn: No Fly Zone, there was a practice option for landing; however, there is no word yet whether this mode will be included in F-14 Tomcat. Assuming it’s a complete port, then expect there to be an option for perfecting those landings.
As evident by the in-game screenshots, players will be pitted in a 1st person view within the aircraft to help replicate as real of an experience as possible. You’ll be armed with weapons such as Air-Interceptor missiles and 20 mm cannons. In this environment with complete 360-degree movement, you can obviously expect to be aided with a handy radar to help you locate those MIG 29s, MIG 24s, and other bogies.
As we’ve already said many times in other previews, 3D environments aren’t a strength of the Game Boy Advance. Virtuacraft is set to overcome this obstacle by using the GBA’s advanced sprite rendering to help create a 3D world. In Turn and Burn, missions could take place under the burning sun, in burnt orange skies, fog, sunset, or night; so we can expect such similar environments in F-14 Tomcat. Furthermore, the take off, explosion, and missile launch sequences were a pleasure to watch on the SNES. Hopefully, this trend will hold true for the GBA version.
In the SNES version, it did offer a funky two-player mode that had one player controlling movements, and another controlling weaponry. There’s no word whether F-14 Tomcat will do that, but it has been confirmed there will be an optional 4-player linkup that’ll allow up to 4 game owners to take part in some intense multiplayer dog fights.
For now, we’ve pretty much exhausted all that is known on F-14 Tomcat. As new information becomes available, we’ll follow up with much more. Turn and Burn was one of the most enjoyable flight shooting sims on SNES, so if all goes as planned for F-14 Tomcat, expect more of the same fun.
-5.02.01
- 5.18.2001 |
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Battling over water
Landing
Checking the rear
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INFO |
Developer: Virtuacraft Ltd.
Publisher: Majesco Sales Inc
Number of Players: 1-4
Release Date:
August 2001
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