Believe it or not, there is a plot. You are Captain Skyhawk, a fighter pilot working to fend off an alien invasion. The aliens have built four land bases to siphon Earth's energy into their mothership in order to power it. Meanwhile, two scientists creating a secret weapon have been captured and must be rescued. You must destroy the four main bases, rescue the scientists, get the secret weapon onto your fighter jet and defeat the alien menace by destroying the alien menace.
It should be mentioned that the game got a PAL release in 1991, not 1994 like I originally thought.
Mission 1
In the first mission, you'll be destroying the first of four enemy bases.
Each mission is split up into three parts. The first is the isometric part.
Up and Down let you descend and ascend respectively, while Left and Right let you move left and right. A lets you fire your guns, while B lets you deploy your bombs depending on how you press the button. Lightly tap B to fire the air-to-ground Maverick missiles. Press B once to lock on and then again to fire to launch an air-to-air Phoenix Missile at an enemy. Press and hold B, then release the button to take out ground targets
The way I play this game, bombs will not be used, I always hold the A button so I can shoot down anything when necessary, and I always fly at the highest possible altitude to decrease my chances of getting hit, especially by the spinning silver diamonds that act as the enemies' projectiles. Watch out for them; it can be hard to tell that you've taken damage until it is too late. Thankfully, walls are easier to dodge, and the layout of all the isometric stages are exactly the same; it is just the missions and the enemies that are different.
At the bottom of the screen is your current altitude, the power meter is your current speed in certain missions, and to the right of that is your current air speed and the amount of lives you have left. To the right of all that is your current score, your current number of Phoenix Missiles, the number of credits you have to buy things between missions, your current number of Maverick Missiles and your current number of Hawk Bombs. At the far right is the current amount of fuel you have left, and if you run out of fuel, you'll lose a life. Thankfully, if you die for any reason, you don't get sent back very far, and you have three continues in case you lose all your lives.
At the end of the path, you'll reach the base. Move back and forth while pressing the A button to fire your guns, and always stay in that motion as you fire so you can take out the spheres protecting the bases without getting hit. Afterwards, the main boss will shoot at you. Keep moving back and forth while shooting the gun at it and you will eventually take it down.
You'll get extra bonus points for everything you shoot down before going on to the next section. If you manage to shoot down 64 or more enemies, you'll get an extra life before moving on.
The second section always has you destroying enemy fighter planes. Move around with the D-Pad much like you did in the first section, and fire with your guns and missiles. Shoot down all the planes that you can to get as many credits as possible for the store that you'll enter between missions. Different colored planes have different behaviors: white are the slowest, while red is the fastest. Be careful in later missions; the planes will eventually shoot back.
The third section will always have you docking with the space station. Carefully tap Up and Down on the D-Pad, as your movements will be a bit floaty, and press B when you're in place. Never move left or right in these sections; while the game allows you to, you'll doom yourself to failure as you are always lined up horizontally with the entrance to the space station at the start, so you just need to move up and down. If you hit anything other than the entrance, you'll crash and burn and you'll lose a life, and you'll have to try again.
Once you get in the space station, you can buy bombs and also improve the guns on your cannon. By improving your guns, the guns will fire faster when you hold down the A button than at Level 1. When you reach Levels 4 and 5, the guns will fire very fast, and you'll be able to take down even more enemies than usual without having to mash the button.
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