This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.
Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES
41–50 of 165 posts
Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES
#42Reminds me a bit of the game Retaliator, when I was 12 a class mate earned himself a night of "pick your own time to go to bed at camp" because he could show the teacher how to land. [0, the landing is at the very end]. I think at the time nobody knew what key to hit to deploy the landing gear (and flaps, though I think you could land without flaps). And since it was all copied stuff there was no book, no internet...…
Gosh, I miss the aesthetics of vector games of this era. My absolute favourite was Armour-Geddon (on the Amiga), which because I'd pirated it I barely had any clue what to do but.. it was still fun, and so beautiful. And fast!
I know there's Tiny Combat Arena from 'Microprose' but its development's taking a while. I'd dearly love to know if there's anything else of that contemporary ilk out there today.
Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES
#43I 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
My recollection is that if you missed it you kept playing but were doomed to crash maybe 30 seconds later from low fuel. Talk about punishing.
Yes, that's right.
Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES
#44I 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
The refueling music is the best part of the soundtrack, and somehow that video doesn't have it...different version of the game?
Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES
#45Now I just need to get the hang of docking in Elite.
Docking computer was like the very first thing I would buy. That or a mining laser so I could more quickly get the cash to buy the computer. On the C64 version, it would play Blue Danube in a shout out to 2001, and I still remember the horribly flat note in it (it had to be deliberate, the same note is fine in the rest of the piece). Sometimes it would try to dock with the wrong side of the station, but that usually only happened if you turned it on when on the wrong side already.
Before then, just approach the bay straight on and if you go slow enough, you'll dock fine even if it's perpendicular. Probably differs with whatever version you're playing though.
Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES
#46I 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 convenient that refueling also replenishes your missiles.
Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
That said, this is bad game design. A manual should never be needed.
> A manual should never be needed. That's going too far. Also, we're talking about the 8-bit era: 1) technical limits prevented a lot of in-game exposition that you could do now and 2) before the internet, people had fewer options for reading material. I read every manual for every NES and SNES game I ever had, multiple times . If I was into a game my options were limited to 1) play it, 2) read the manual if I couldn…
Plenty of time to read the entire manual on the car ride home from Toys R Us or while another family member was using the one TV.
Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES
#48This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.
The number of times I've used that quote in the last 12 years . . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnRdPZjoMKM
Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES
#49Oh god the trauma this brought back.
Seriously, I'm glad everyone else is young enough not to have been scarred by games that either were designed to eat quarters or designed to keep you at it for a couple of months so you got your money's worth.
Why not show the last race from Decathlon by Activision to see if my forearm muscles cramp up instinctively.
Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES
#50This 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.
The trick is just to know the numbers to aim for and ignore the instructions. I had the game and the manual, but I can’t recall if I ever read the manual. I played the game a ton and was maybe 50/50 at the landings, but just followed the on-screen instructions. I could probably have puzzled out the target numbers, but never did (was it in the manual?). Now you can just google the correct values and nail it every time…
> The trick is just to know the numbers to aim for and ignore the instructions.
Interestingly, the instructions are actually all correct. If it says, "Left! Left!" for instance you will crash if you don't fix it.
I think the disconnect might be that altitude and speed somewhat feedback on each other and it takes time for your inputs to settle, so it always feels like you're chasing the instructions.