Radar Mission

"A great battleship style game with an okay submarine combat game tacked on"

Radar Mission came out for the Gameboy several years ago, but is still a game I find myself playing very often. It comes with two modes of play, a classic battleship game with a few extras to the game and a submarine hunting game that is fun, but won't keep you entertained for very long. In the off chance that you find someone else with Radar Mission, there is two player support for both games.

Game 1- Battleship: This is your standard battleship game right down to grid style and ship classes. Of course it has a few more things to go with it. These include a near-miss indicator, a 'lucky' shot and an aircraft launch. At the beginning of any game you can indicate which ones of these options you want, and which ones your opponent will get. If you're playing against a computer you can also change the difficulty level. In addition, for the first round only you can chooe your board size from 8x8, 10x10 or 12x12. If your playing against the computer, your second and third game will be on 8x8 boards automatically. Once you have got your settings down you get to place your ships. They come in a randomly placed layout to begin with, but you can rearrange them as you please. After your ships have been placed you begin, against the computer you start first and in a two player game its whoever started the game. Every shot you take will be marked on your board with a small dot, hits will be marked with larger dots. There is a standard plethora of missile sounds, explosions and victory sounds to hear while you play with some MIDI music in the backround that isn't annoying or memorable. The background music will change as the game progresses based on status: if you are one ship away from winning it will become more upbeat, and if you are one away from dying it will become desperate. You keep going in standard battleship style until one player sinks all of the others ships. Fortunatly its not a straight up conversion to Gameboy. As stated before there are extras that can be added. The near-miss indicator is self-explanatory, if you are near a ship it will chime. The lucky hits are a bit more complicated. Randomly sorted around the game are places that if you hit it will give you a special shot type. There are two different types, golden and black. The golden type gives you an X shaped shot that hits five squares worth of spaces. The black stars are one shot kills, if you hit a ship with the star it is completely destroyed as is any ship that it is touching. Aircraft are the final extra which can be toggled. If your carrier survives for 15 turns, then you get an aircraft launched off it. Its a one shot kill deal, but it is a nice little thing to have going for you if you need it in the end (it has saved my butt on numerous occasions). The final part of the game is the victory screen, you get a chance to see how the other commander's ships were arrayed and where the luckies are located at. In addition, you get to watch the enemies battleship get blown up (assuming you won) or the capital destroyed (if you beat level three against the computer). In case your wondering, the only thing I could dredge up about the storyline is that there is none. Its not even mentioned in the manual, so just enjoy the battleship action.

This is classic battleship action, and such can be a great time waster and highly addictive.

Game 2- Sub Hunt: This section can be described as a first person battleship if you want. The main idea is to control your sub (you can only go left or right) and destroy the enemy's fleet. Destroying the enemy's sub is not mandatory, but it will give you a huge point bonus. The main feature of this game is the ability to customize your sub, to a degree. All you can really do is modify the sub's torpedo launches (launches one normally, two at once upgraded), update the sonar (sonar shows you little dots telling you where the ships are, upgraded it tells you what direction they are going in as well), and speed. You can purchase any of these at the beginning of the game easily. If you get hit (either from the enemy sub or on later levels by dive bombers launched from carriers) you will randomly lose any of the upgrades that have been purchased (you can't be degraded past the normal sub, though). If this does happen you can try to earn the credit needed to buy back the upgrade by shooting moneybags that will appear. The main problem with this game is that it gets repetitive fast. You will spend a lot of time going after a single ship or two while your opponent obliterates your forces. Again, no real storyline to follow at all. The only thing that will keep you coming back for this game is a High Score list (that gets reset when you turn of your gameboy) and a little random violence, but not much else.

Summery: Radar Mission is a very solid game for Battleship enthusiasts. Its all but impossible to find in stores, but online auctions like EBay regularly have it available for $5.00 + shipping and handling (normally $1.50 or so). If you do find it, its worth the purchase for some good time wasting, but I wouldn't spend much more than $5.00 on it.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/03/99, Updated 12/03/99