Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES

relaxing.run

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 165 posts

Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES

#121

Post by 01100011 »

I'm 50 and got my NES in Xmas '86. It's funny how the difficulty has changed. I remember having no problem with carrier landings as a kid, beat Metroid(with the bikini ending) without reading Nintendo Power or calling the help line, figured out turtle trapping on my own...

Going back and trying to do all this via emulation is now a lot harder. I don't know if it's the timing or the fact that I'm just old and crappy now, but if I didn't have the save states of an emulator I would have given up on gaming ages ago due to frustration.

Then again I don't have the hyperfocus and 12 hour marathon gaming sessions like I did for much of my youth.

Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES

#122

Post by gkhartman »

pikkoloassembly wrote: post #6

Oh god the trauma this brought back.

Thank you! I was looking for this comment amongst the "this was easy" ones. I was pretty young when this game came out. I rarely got past this landing.

I think I still have the Top Gun NES cartridge in a box somewhere. Maybe this is a good excuse to fire up the NES and try it.

Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES

#124

Post by rconti »

jordigh wrote: post #94

The information to properly land the plane is in the manual. The required air speed and altitude have never been a secret, if you read the manual (which I guess most kids didn't). The real difficulty, not explored in this disassembly, is that the game has semi-realistic physics! My older brother was in flight school at the time and was able to easily land the plane and taught me how to do it. As the article states, "…

I don't specifically remember it, but I had the manual, and I was a voracious manual reader as a kid. I also remember the carrier landings being the hardest thing in any game I ever played. Felt like about a 1% success rate, and I never quite knew what separated a successful landing from an unsuccessful one that looked identical on approach.

Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES

#125

Post by auspiv »

dynm wrote: post #89

Incidentally, this is not a blog that makes it easy to look at the archives! - No link to other posts - This post is at https://relaxing.run/blag/posts/top-gun-landing/ - https://relaxing.run/blag/posts/ gives a 403 - https://relaxing.run/blag/ gives a 403 - https://relaxing.run/ gives a full-page picture of some beautiful mountains - No Atom/RSS link hidden in source Not a complaint! If this is an intentional choice…

ZScaler (at work) classifies this whole site as

Website blocked

Not allowed to browse Weapons/Bombs category

You tried to visit:https://relaxing.run/blag/posts/top-gun-landing/

Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES

#126

Post by debo_ »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #74
Boxxed wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The refueling music is the best part of the soundtrack, and somehow that video doesn't have it...different version of the game? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfUZix8jVBY&t=187s

Speaking of the soundtrack, before Virt (Jake Kaufman) made it big (composer behind Shantae, Shovel Knight, Ducktales Remastered, a few others), he made this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uEUImofSms "Bogey at your 6", the combat theme from the game, but remixed as if Konami had made it for the VRC6, the NES mapper chip that added 3 additional oscillators that made the Japanese release of Castlevania III what it w…

My favorite original virt track is Incident Zero: https://youtu.be/Py1BmKVdHfg

Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES

#127

Post by iberator »

stouset wrote: post #82
debo_ wrote: post #25

I never had much trouble landing on the carrier, but refueling in the sky? I think I only managed it a few times. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vetEg8J-wcw

How in the hell is that tanker flying at ~1,200 knots (1,400mph)!? That is nearly Mach 2!

Maybe it was indicted speed and not ground speed LOL

Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES

#128

Post by colechristensen »

jordigh wrote: post #94

The information to properly land the plane is in the manual. The required air speed and altitude have never been a secret, if you read the manual (which I guess most kids didn't). The real difficulty, not explored in this disassembly, is that the game has semi-realistic physics! My older brother was in flight school at the time and was able to easily land the plane and taught me how to do it. As the article states, "…

Man I miss manuals.

Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES

#129

Post by LVB »

IncandescentGas wrote: post #106
jordigh wrote: post #94

The information to properly land the plane is in the manual. The required air speed and altitude have never been a secret, if you read the manual (which I guess most kids didn't). The real difficulty, not explored in this disassembly, is that the game has semi-realistic physics! My older brother was in flight school at the time and was able to easily land the plane and taught me how to do it. As the article states, "…

> if you read the manual (which I guess most kids didn't). Most kids did't read the manual? I would rtfm for every game I got my hands on during the car ride home from toysrus or blockbuster. If Mom had several errands to run, I may rtfm a dozen times before I finally got home with the game.

I certainly read the manual when I was asked to enter the 15th word from page 47 in order to keep playing Chessmaster 2000...

Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES

#130

Post by milesvp »

BashiBazouk wrote: post #123

Most people? Am I one of the few who grew up with video games from the beginning and mostly missed Nintendo? My equivalent for the time period was Falcon, in my case played on an Amiga 1000.

If you could afford an amiga around this time, you most likely weren't impressed with any of the consoles. Even if you had a commodore 64, you may not have been interested with the NES, my experience was that the games on the commodore was that many of the games were closer to the arcade than what you got with the early NES cartridges could do. Later cartridges outstripped the commodore since they added extra processing in the cartridges themselves. By the end of the NES life, the games had gotten really good, some games could almost compete with the early SNES titles.

I had a similar feeling towards the N64 some years later. I had a 486 that could do much better 3D and with more interesting games, and there was nothing in the nintendo catalogue that could compete with what I basically had free access to due to the internet.

Post reply on HN