Barnstorming

"Take me to the farm..."

There's something about flying that makes existence more bearable. Maybe it's the sensation of lifting off from the restrictive ground, or maybe it's that wonderful feeling of air flowing past your face and through your hair. You can still get a rush from looking out the window and realizing that you're thousands of feet in the air, civilization left behind in favor of the clouds. If the utter beauty of cruising through the stratosphere isn't enough to satisfy your thrill needs, you can take the plane under your control, performing banks and dives as you zoom around the sky. But as appealing as that may sound, the piloting skills required for such stunts don't come without years of experience. You'll have to spend some quality time behind the controls of a plane before risking life and limb for a brief adrenaline rush.

But if you don't feel like putting in the effort, Barnstorming can provide a decent substitute. Instead of controlling some state of the art military aircraft or anything complicated, you'll be granted a basic crop duster for your flying needs. You won't spend much time in high altitudes, restricted to only a few dozen feet above endless fields of farmland. Unfortunately, you won't get the chance to show off your mad piloting skills or perform any fancy madcap stunts. Instead, you've got to navigate through the infinite rows of barns that dot the countryside, trying to attain the fastest flight time the gaming world has ever seen. Using nothing more than some quick reflexes and decent timing, you'll get to storm your way through buildings, your progress hopefully unimpeded.

As soon as the engine revs to life and your landing gear starts turning, you'll be off into the air, almost all cares left behind. But before you can sit back and enjoy your successful takeoff, a giant windmill will suddenly appear in front of you, its unyielding support beams standing directly in your flight path. You'll have to pull up immediately, hopefully gaining enough altitude and avoiding the obstacle. But if you can't get away in time, all you can do is watch helplessly as your dinky little plane smacks into the windmill…and bounces backward from the force of the impact unharmed. Apparently, your crop duster is made of the finest metal available, rendering it invincible against anything that gets in your way. However, that doesn't mean that it can't be slowed down. You'll have to deal with dozens of windmills, flocks of birds, and even the roofs of barns as your high-speed quest unfolds. Each time you bounce back from a collision, you'll lose a few seconds as you regain control of the plane, thus annihilating any hopes of breaking your high score record and losing any bragging rights that you might have once had.

Once you manage to get the hang of dodging windmills and everything else standing in your path, you'll still have to make the effort of making it through the barns unscathed. You'll be constantly changing your flight level, trying to find the ideal distance between the sky and ground in hopes of getting the most room to maneuver. But once you've mastered the art of barnstorming and achieved the quick play time that the average pilot can only dream about, you can spend some time with the other modes to keep your thirst for a challenge quenched. While the default Hedge Hopper mode requires you to fly through ten barns, the other modes will offer a steady progression in the difficulty level. The pattern of windmills, barns, and birds will be mixed up, forcing you to re-memorize the layout of the playing field. You'll have to cruise through an increasing number of barns, requiring ever-increasing levels of patience and controlling perfection. Once you've mastered one difficulty, you'll graduate to the next level, eventually attempting the Flying Ace mode. All you can do is sit back, grip the controller, and pray that you have enough skill to see glory.

Sadly, this epic flight through the heartland doesn't have the graphical presentation that it truly deserves. You'll never get to see the endless fields of corn and other vegetables, nothing more than a bland landscape of green almost as far as the eye can see. You can just make out a massive mountain range looming in the far distance, a fiery sun just peeking over tops. The barns themselves lack any kind of detail, nothing more than mere blocks of solid colors. At least the farms come equipped with the usual weather vanes and endless rows of white fences to make the landscape a little more realistic. Also, the windmills are truly impressive structures, their pixilated wooden beams the only detailed aspect of the game. But despite the bland farmland, you won't get the chance to truly despise it. Instead, you'll be spending too much time dodging windmills and birds to notice.

While countless other Atari games are essentially clones of a single basic concept, Barnstorming offers a breath of fresh air for those of us who have become jaded with some of the more popular members of the 2600 library. Instead of shooting aliens or racing through primitive streets, you've got the opportunity to get behind the controls of a plane and have the ride of your life. Though this game doesn't offer the same degree of freedom that other flying games offer today, its sheer difficulty will constantly beckon you back to your Atari system, goading you on for just one more go before everything is said and done. With the rush of barns and windmills ever present, Barnstorming will not disappoint, even as it flies away into gaming obscurity.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/04/05