We’re back, and we’re unlicensed!
I’ve talked on a few occasions about how much I love the NES’s library of unlicensed games, which range from being cool curiosities to profound disasters. Some are even both! This week’s game is one of those – FireHawk was released by CodeMasters and Camerica in 1991. The former had a slogan that’s probably best described as…overconfident.
In FireHawk, you’re commissioned directly by the President of the United States to stop drug trafficking in some fictional someplace. The solution to this, apparently, is to take a helicopter and blow everything up. I suppose that’s one way to take care of it.
Oh, and you have to rescue some guys. I guess that matters, too. Helpfully, the game gives you an arrow (seen above, regrettably pointing away from the thing I’m blowing up) to indicate where your target is. Once you’re there and nothing is attacking you, you just have to hover over the target for a couple of seconds, at which point you’re treated to a little “rescue” mini-game, in which you need to shoot down enemies from another perspective while your pal climbs up a rope and into your chopper. You have two separate crosshairs, each corresponding one of the NES’s buttons.
Once you’ve done all your rescuing, you just have to hover over your friendly neighborhood aircraft carrier to land and end the mission – and don’t worry, this isn’t like how some other games handle this sort of landing.
FireHawk is somewhat simple, but not in a bad way. I honestly appreciate that it doesn’t try to do too much, as a number of older tactical games do, but that same positive choice makes the game also feel pretty repetitive – the levels I played all felt more or less the same, with an increasing number of challenges as they went along.
Thankfully, it does its thing well enough that it’s a decently enjoyable little game. If you’re into the 16-bit “Strike” series (i.e. Desert Strike or similar), or just tactical action games in general, FireHawk is at least worth a try. At the end of the day, who can say no to a devastating helicopter gunship?
Yeah, that’s what I thought. Next week’s game is a truly unexpected handheld port of a game verrrry loosely based on of one of my favorite 90’s flicks. This can’t possibly go poorly.