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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

#61

Post by biofox »

kmeisthax wrote: post #38
phantasmish wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A good chunk of the difficulty in the TMNT dam level comes from the fact that it has a lot of poorly implemented mechanics. Displaced Gamers has a really good video breaking all of it down here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHiFNWJXWgI

Thank you. You just unlocked a repressed trauma.

Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES

#64

Post by actionfromafar »

detritus wrote: post #42
teekert wrote: post #30

Reminds 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.

Ah those vectors..

I loved them too. During that era I got to try some kind of flight simulator on a Silicon Graphics. Smoooth shapes, extremely high resolution, must have been lots of tiny triangles, and nice shading. I remember thinking, this is the future, can’t wait to get this in personal computers!

Nah, instead almost two decades of muddy lores textures on lopoly models.

I guess now we are finally there, with raytracing in games. But I would still like to see the nontextured aesthetic make a comeback.

Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES

#65

Post by Boxxed »

moron4hire wrote: post #58
Boxxed wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think people focused too much on the speed too early on, which put them in a stall condition without any feedback they were stalling. For most of the run, you want to be losing altitude so you don't notice, but near the end you're probably too low with not enough speed to climb, so even though you're pulling up, you're still losing altitude, and that's where people got the idea that their inputs didn't "matter."

> but near the end you're probably too low with not enough speed to climb, so even though you're pulling up, you're still losing altitude

The region of reversed command -- pretty cool that such a simple NES game managed to replicate that counter-intuitive part of the flight envelope.

https://agairupdate.com/2021/10/02/the-region-of-reversed-co...

Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES

#66

Post by ckozlowski »

amarant wrote: post #55

I was pretty smol when I played this game last. I don't think I've ever managed to actually land on that hangar ship. That was what my older brothers were for!

I didn't either!

Granted, I wasn't good at video games in general. And this one infuriated me, because I loved it. I could easily beat the first level, but then I crashed on carrier landing. This happened for years. I only ever saw the first level of this game.

Then one day, while staying at my elementary afterschool sitter's house, one of the kids there told me he played Top Gun as well. He could land, but wasn't very good at the rest of the game.

A plan was formed.

The next day, I brought the cartridge over, and we settled in. I'd play the level, then hand him the controller at which point he'd plant it on the deck. Rinse and Repeat. Top Gun and Top Gun: The Second Mission didn't have too many levels, (6 maybe?) and I don't think it took us too long to beat. Neither one of us had seen much of the game. But working together, we beat both in a matter of hours.

I still look back on that as one of the few NES games I finished without codes or a Game Genie, just the help of a friend. =D

Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES

#67

Post by doubled112 »

jrjeksjd8d wrote: post #15
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 ha…

I've heard that last part put as "we're further from the PS2 than the PS2 was from the Atari 2600." The statement really stuck with me.

Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES

#68

Post by wat10000 »

jcalvinowens wrote: post #62

I love sim hijinks. It's possible to reliably land a 737 on the carrier in X-plane: just take off with 30min of fuel, drag it in with full flaps and high power, and set the parking brake before you touch down.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's possible in real life. The Navy tested a C-130 on the USS Forrestal and accomplished 21 landings. I'm sure a C-130 has better short-field performance than a 737, but they were also testing it with substantial cargo on board. Official figures for required runway distance for a 737 are far in excess of a carrier's deck length, of course, but those figures include weird things like "safety" that are not strictly required, and tend not to fully account for the 40+kt headwind you can get from a carrier steaming into the wind.

Re: Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES

#70

Post by virgil_disgr4ce »

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

This was the part that my brother and I could never, ever, not even once, complete. I still rue it to this day.
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