Nostalgic Game Review
Welcome to a new episode of the Nostalgic Game Review, where each month I muse over an old game I played long ago. Other than indulging my own nostalgia, this column also hopefully shed some light on game design and reflect on how gaming technologies have evolved.
Without further ado…
Jane’s AH-64D Longbow
What is it?
This is a game released on DOS in 1996, it’s a ‘hard core’ simulation game, where the player have realistic controls over the Apache helicopter either via keyboard or optionally joystick and thruster control (something that likes like this image below)
The game is very well done with detailed graphics for its time, realistic physics and control mechanism. You get to customize your Longbow helicopter
That also means that the control can get tedious and pretty difficult to master, so it’s not for the faint of heart
I saw this screen plenty of time – as I tried, failed, and learned how to fly a helicopter and air battle:
My impression
While I was definitely no good with the game, probably didn’t progress much in any missions, I remember learning quite a lot playing it. The game comes with an amazing, spiral-bound, manual, with a lot of fundamentals about the helicopters, the physics (aerodynamics of creating motions such as roll, yaw, pitch, vertical ups and downs), about radar technologies, and heat guided v.s. laser guided missiles, anti-missile flares, stealth maneuvering.
All is all, this is a great game that I enjoyed and learned a lot. The sense of reward when you do win a battle, completing a mission, is beyond words. Even at the resolution of 640×480 😉
Here is the opening video for the game:
And a few minutes of gameplay
This game is available on the Internet Archive! （it loads forever and doesn’t really work for me… good luck?)
That’s it for this episode of Nostalgic Game Review! Thank you for visiting! I appreciate any comments/feedback or if there’s a game you would like me to cover 🙂
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