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Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES

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Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES

#11

Post by bitwize »

rob74 wrote: post #9

> After about a minute of flying the game checks your state and plays a little cutscene showing either a textbook landing or an expensive fireball. Either way, you get a “Mission Accomplished!” and go to the next level (after all, you don’t own that plane, the taxpayers do): For realism's (and comedy's) sake, they could have shown a pixel ejecting from the five (I think) pixels that form the jet before it explodes in…

In the "bad ending" to Rocket Knight Adventures (complete the game on Easy or lower), you actually see Sparkster leave the Pig Star's crashing escape pod as a pixel, then there's a little sneezing sound as a tiny parachute deploys. It's kind of disappointing, but then to see a real ending you're supposed to beat the game on a higher difficulty.

Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES

#13

Post by ghc »

I never played Top Gun, but I did grow up playing "Turn and Burn: No Fly Zone" for the SNES. All these years later, it's still amazing to me how much the graphics improved from one console generation to the next. I don't remember any other console transition being so consequential from a graphics perspective.

Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES

#15

Post by jrjeksjd8d »

ghc wrote: post #13

I never played Top Gun, but I did grow up playing "Turn and Burn: No Fly Zone" for the SNES. All these years later, it's still amazing to me how much the graphics improved from one console generation to the next. I don't remember any other console transition being so consequential from a graphics perspective.

Super Mario 64 was an N64 launch title. Resident Evil 4 was a late Gamecube title. In my mind that's probably the biggest gap in graphical fidelity between generations of console. But I can see how going from NES games like Super Mario Bros to SNES games like Star Fox would be a close contender.

PS1 -> PS2 -> PS3 or Xbox -> 360 feel more iterative because they started after the 3D era had already begun. We haven't had a new dominant paradigm for gaming since then (besides mobile gaming).

Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES

#17

Post by busterarm »

I actually learned how to do this by playing the aircraft carrier landing simulator game that was at the USS Intrepid. It's a little more fleshed out but the speed range and altitude is roughly the same. The simulator gave you a light indicator to assist with your approach.

Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES

#18

Post by Boxxed »

rob74 wrote: post #9

> After about a minute of flying the game checks your state and plays a little cutscene showing either a textbook landing or an expensive fireball. Either way, you get a “Mission Accomplished!” and go to the next level (after all, you don’t own that plane, the taxpayers do): For realism's (and comedy's) sake, they could have shown a pixel ejecting from the five (I think) pixels that form the jet before it explodes in…

> ...but seriously, you didn't even get your score reduced for crashing the plane on landing?

Well, you don't get the 10,000 bonus points

Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES

#19

Post by moron4hire »

This is one of those cultural memes ("The Top Gun landing was ImPoSsIbLe") that tells on the person saying it for not having read the manual. If you don't read the manual, the landing sequence is pretty much impossible to figure out. If you do, you pretty much get it the first and every time after that.
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