Move Over Cobra

"Thunderhawk" sounds like the name of a TV program kids watched on Saturday mornings in the 1980s, but it's actually a combat helicopter flight-sim released in 1991...or is it?  The game begins on a dark and stormy night.  A HMX-1 helicopter sets down on the White House lawn and immediately a rather cartoonish looking man, in brown overcoat, steps out.  He quickly rushes up some stairs through a door, and down a hall into an office as lightning flashes through the window outside.  Another man, seated at a desk, waits for him.  Their conversation is as follows: 

"Things are getting desperate."

"Yes, Mr. President."

"Is the equipment ready?"

"Final preparations are in progress, sir."

"Is the team assembled?"

(exchange of handshakes)

"Yes, sir.  Jack Marshall is the chief tactician."

"...and the pilot?"

"One of our finest, sir."

"Good.  You got twenty-four hours."

It's all very black ops and sounds more than a little bit like a parody of a Tom Clancy novel.  The "equipment" is none other than the titular "Thunderhawk" (model number AH-73M), an experimental (and entirely fictional) attack helicopter deployed to "promote" American interests overseas.  The game features six zones of conflict: South America, Central America, Europe, The Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Alaska.  Each location is treated as a campaign and broken down into a series of missions complete with briefings and debriefings conducted by the aforementioned Jack Marshall.  The missions also feature primary and secondary objectives which will adjust the outcome of each campaign in notable ways.  Generally speaking, these game design features feel heavily inspired by the original Wing Commander which released a year earlier.  

Gameplay is best described as an in-cockpit POV combat flight-sim with a rather elegant control scheme.  Moving the mouse in any direction will cause the helicopter to tilt and, consequently, move in that direction.  Holding the right mouse button while doing so though changes the effect of the inputs.  Forward and backward mouse movements cause the AH-73M to climb or drop in altitude respectively, while left and right inputs make the chopper swivel to port or starboard.  The right mouse button fires the currently selected weapon while a short list of keyboard commands handle all other aircraft systems.  The weapons themselves consist of a 1200 round rotary autocannon as well as six hardpoints that typically mount a mixture of missile clusters and rocket pods.  Occasionally, missions will call for special ordinance such as ASW devices or crater-making bombs.  There's also a default loadout that assigns an appropriate selection of armaments for a given mission.

The opposition is typically made up of tracked or wheeled vehicles with occasional gunboats appearing on water covered regions.  Enemy aircraft (particularly jets) can be a bit unnerving to tangle with in that they appear and vanish very quickly owing to their high transit speed.  Hostile helicopters become increasingly common as player takes on harder and harder locations.  In an early campaign though, the first encounter with an enemy rotary aircraft is hyped up almost like an boss battle.  However, for me, the engagement ended up being anticlimactic because I simply shot down the enemy helicopter with an air-to-air missile the moment it showed up on the radar.  By far, the most annoying enemy type in the game are lone individuals on foot who takes potshots at the player's AH-73M using a man-portable SAM launchers.  Oftentimes, I would have to make multiple low-altitude strafing runs just to nail one these tiny targets.  Hilariously, they would transform into massive smoldering craters when I finally got them.

Despite liking Thunderhawk quite a bit, I never actually finished the game.  The sixth and final campaign, that takes place in Alaska, proved to be a bit too difficult for me.  I can still remember Jack Marshall chewing me out for only completing the primary objectives on the first Alaska mission.  To this day, I don't know what to tell the guy.  I had to return to base because I used up every last bit of ordinance I had on enemy targets.  I guess one helicopter can only accomplish so much regardless if it is Choplifter or Thunderhawk.