User Reviews

Cool game, way ahead of its time. Now at days it's really difficult, but it was more so back then. I had this game on a gameboy, way before gameboy color, and it was very hard to see where you were going, especially since it was before a backlit screen was available. It was fun at the time, appreciate them taking the risk of making it first person.

You play Maverick – one of the hottest pilots in the US Navy, in training to become the best of the best. However, when the call goes out for action, you are dispatched to the front line. With battles against specific enemy pilots as well as migs and ground forces, you are the sole hope against an enemy that aims to bring the US navy low and drive them out of the region.

I owned this game when it was released on the original Nintendo 8-bit machine and it has stuck in mind reasonably well (in fact – still exists in an attic somewhere I'm sure). The film has two different strands to it – one where you work your way up by taking on other (computer controlled) pilots and gaining rank with each win, and the other where you play the main mission. The main mission is fun but it is too difficult in my opinion. The first mission is a fun learning curve but the second (or third – I forget) mission is way too hard and I must admit that I was never able to get past it (the first one flying over land). In fairness to my skills I was only about 12 or so when I had it so I may not have been at the peak of my skills!

The thing that made me and my brother keep coming back to this game was partially the mission but mostly it was the individual air battles. The game sets you up against increasingly more difficult pilots in a one on one battle - you start flying towards and past each other and then try to engage. Some of the easier pilots will be able to be hit by a missile before they even get past you and likewise some of the harder ones will try and pick you off the same way. The number of missiles you have depends on the targeting area you want – the large targeting area you have, the fewer missiles, however you have unlimited ammo for your side machine guns. It is quite easy to progress quite far but the tougher pilots are very good and the learning curve is well pitched. Personally I always enjoyed using the machine guns on the medium pilots to test my skill and only resorting to the missiles for the tougher ones. The game also allows one on one play between two human players and that too is fun: the radar system is familiar and useful and, although it's hardly Goldeneye's level it's fun.

Overall I very much doubt that you will ever be able to find this game or even many Nintendos to play it on, but it isn't really worth the hunt. It will have dated very badly and the graphics will be very poor compared to modern flight games, however it was a bit of fun at the time. The missions are OK but become too difficult too suddenly to the detriment of the game, however the one on one dogfights are fun whether you're playing your brother or against some computer controlled pilots with silly names and increasing skill levels.

I remember playing this on my Commodore 64 when I was in high school. During that time, until the first Nintento took off, we were still feeling the effects of the great videogame crash of 1984 and not a lot of new games or systems were produced, so a lot of computer games went unheard of due to the lack of commercials put out to advertise them.

Anyway, the Top Gun game was vector graphics based and was pretty decent for its time and was set up as a head to head shooter. If you have this game, boot it up and enjoy the fun of yesteryear.