Thank you for this.
Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES
141–150 of 165 posts
Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES
#142I'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 n…
Man you just unlocked a memory. I'm about the same age...I had forgot about when we lucked our way into "turtle trapping" (didn't know until I read your post it was even called that). When the lives counter goes crazy (we called it "infinity men") we genuinely had no idea what was going on at first and thought we broke the game. It happened when a buddy and I were completely bored messing around with the game and I r…
Yeah, the number of lives counter started showing gibberish and we were like WTF. It looked like the game broke.
Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES
#143I 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
ugh i had forgotten all about this game until I clicked your link and then promptly closed the tab. Carrier landing was frustrating enough but the re-fueling was another level. I played this at my friend's house whenever I would go there and spend the night. That was an actual thing back in the day, you'd get your parents to let you stay the night at a friend's house and then you'd stay up all night playing NES, eati…
Uh, this is still a thing? Kids have sleepovers. And there often isn't much sleeping involved.
(Okay, maybe they aren't playing the NES explicitly, but same thing.)
Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES
#144The 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.
The people working hint hotlines apparently memorized some information from manuals, as so many kids without access to the manuals called with the same questions. The famous code from Star Tropics, for example.
Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES
#145The 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 would read the manual too on the ride home. But I think that was only for new games? I seem to remember that rentals didn't come with manuals. The best memory was my grandma picking me up to spend the summer at her house. We stopped by wal-mart and I grabbed the first release of Gran Turismo for psx. It came with a fairly giant manual. Had a three hour drive to her house. I read it over and over!
Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES
#146The 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.
Todays games have replaced them with wikis.
I miss being able to play a game and have things be somewhat apparent within the game. Nowadays it seems like you have to have a second monitor with the wiki open.
Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
ugh i had forgotten all about this game until I clicked your link and then promptly closed the tab. Carrier landing was frustrating enough but the re-fueling was another level. I played this at my friend's house whenever I would go there and spend the night. That was an actual thing back in the day, you'd get your parents to let you stay the night at a friend's house and then you'd stay up all night playing NES, eati…
Uh, this is still a thing? Kids have sleepovers. And there often isn't much sleeping involved. (Okay, maybe they aren't playing the NES explicitly, but same thing.)
My boys are 16 and 13 and went through middle school without a single sleepover.
Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uh, this is still a thing? Kids have sleepovers. And there often isn't much sleeping involved. (Okay, maybe they aren't playing the NES explicitly, but same thing.)
My boys are 16 and 13 and went through middle school without a single sleepover.
Huh. Well, I teach fifth grade and my students tell me about their sleepovers all the time.
My school is all-girls though, maybe the gender matters.
Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES
#149The 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.
Even some of the very early versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator had a carrier landing scenario that was somewhat realistic IIRC!
https://flightsimulator-forums-cdn.azureedge.net/uploads/def...
Thats from version 4 I think, but I vaguely recall it even being in the earlier monochrome versions ...
Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES
#150I 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.
Console Generations are a step function.