Captain Skyhawk

"Well...it tries..I think..."

Among the sea of Nintendo Entertainment System games, you’ll find smaller, little known games that really don’t have too much going for them, but are honestly a ton of fun to play. Captain Skyhawk takes this idea and runs with it through several stages of fighter jet flying, enemy eliminating action with basic visuals, halfway decent sound and rather interesting game play! The story line is somewhat weak, in which you take control of a fighter jet and must free scientists from captivity in order to gain pieces of a rather large bomb that will destroy the enemy force present in the galaxy. I know, it doesn’t seem to make much sense, and what in the hell a fighter jet is doing in outer space is another mystery, but you’ll find that the game play of dropping bombs, blowing up anything and everything as well as the different styles of missions throughout will be enough to net most NES gamers into playing this at least once. Toting a rather interesting way of displaying the game, the visuals are rather basic although they attempt to throw you into a near three-dimensional world. All in all, it’s impressive enough to warrant an above average score if nothing else simply based on what it tried to accomplish!

The game play is your typical fly and raze type of game in which you use your little fighter jet and blow up everything that you can throughout several stages. The weapons that you have are relatively weak to start out, but as you go along through the game, you’ll find different weapons that will help you to get through the later stages. Now, to get these weapons, you’ll have to win different dogfights with enemies in order to win credits that will give you access to a faster cannon, and different styles of missiles! This is a rather interesting way to create a game, but you’ll find that the lack of true bosses and even overall variety in the enemies makes the game play seem to repeat more often than not. Through all of these missions, you’ll see that the game has a couple of different modes of play that come through with situation specific missions such as dropping supplies off to your allies and docking with a gigantic space station in which timing is everything. However, the game is quickly over, and once you’ve been through the game once, there really isn't much of a reason to return to the game except to show your friends later on that you’re a relative badass with the game. A lack of a two-player option is also apparent here, and even though the game really doesn’t call for a two-player cooperative, there could have been some two-player competition action!

Control in Captain Skyhawk is a mixed bag in which you’ll either have instances of perfect control, or what I like to call Ghost Control. Ghost Control is what happens when you play a NES game, and the plane, vehicle, character, or whatever doesn’t move the way that you want it to due to unresponsive control! In some of the missions, you’ll need to have precision timing because the button presses that you need to do in order to perform some of the more intricate stages such as the supply dropping. Another problem with the control is that some of the more interesting maneuvers that you may have to do are linked between different buttons and can overall make the control of your fighter harder to work with. Consider the learning curve in some of these stages to be a little too high for true beginners to just pick up and go with, but veterans to any sort of flight simulation and action adventure games such as Choplifter could easily go with this game in just a few short minutes!

Visually, the game does attempt to go all out with flashing colors and a rather interesting view of your fighter jet. Although the detail is apparent throughout the game, and you really don’t have a set limitation on where you can go in the stages, you’ll find that the hit detection throughout the stages is a little off. Throughout the game, it seems as though you are really fighting over places that are completely barren and lifeless, which leaves the feeling of just flying through the same stage over and over again, with different enemies coming in at different points to show variation! Other than that, the true gem of the visuals comes in with the actual docking portion of the game, and even though it is brief, it does show that the NES is capable of creating something interesting to watch and look at throughout the game.

The audio that you find here in Captain Skyhawk is a little bit too brief for my liking. The tunes that you hear throughout the game are pretty limited, and you’ll find that the music comes through best in the upgrading selection, the title screen and the name entry. Other than that, it seems as though the action and adventure that is supposed to be portrayed throughout the game is muted to the point of being overrun by the sound effects that repeat on a constant basis! The gunfire, sounds of bombs dropping and exploding is what you’ll hear throughout the game, and there really isn’t much else to it. Now, what you would hope for in a game that totes some pretty impressive visuals, is that there would be more of a variety throughout the game to match how the game is presented. However, you won’t find much past the previous points that I mentioned, and you may want to throw in some CD's to the stereo instead of listening to this.

Overall, Captain Skyhawk isn’t a bad game, but it doesn’t quite have enough going for it to warrant anything more than an above average score. With decent visuals and a rather used, but still fun to play basis to the game, there is enough for die hard gamers to play through at least twice in order to get the best score possible. However, the marred control and the lack of true audio throughout the game is enough to make some purists look at this game and wonder just what in the hell was going on with the production of the game before its release! If you’re looking to expand your NES collection to the fullest, then this is a solid choice to round out the C section of your collection. But if you’re looking for something that truly breaks ground in all areas, then you need to look elsewhere, cause Captain Skyhawk just doesn’t cut it.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/09/02, Updated 01/09/02