F1 Tornado

Publisher: Zepplin Games

Designer: Wahid Kahn, Neil Hislop

Type: Shoot-em Up

Platform: C64

Release Date: 1991

Rating:

I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I came to this game, that is whether it was a shootem-up or not. Well, it turned out that it isn’t a flight simulator, but rather a shootem-up, and a pretty hard one at that. You are basically flying a jet fighter and you have lots of enemies coming at you, as well as lots of ships firing stuff at you, and well, yeah, that is about it.

Actually, I found that the baddies pretty much come at you really thick and fast, which made it really, really hard to avoid getting blown up, when it was being hit by a missile (or rather a bullet) from one of the ships or being struck by one of the many planes that seem to come flying in your direction. The thing was that you really don’t seem to be given all that much breathing space, which meant that even if I managed to shoot down, or avoid, one of the many swarms that were coming towards me, then another lot would come. As it turned out, I spent more time dodging things than actually shooting any of the baddies down.

Then there are the ships. Well, there was just way, way too many of them. In fact, it felt as if I was flying over an entire fleet, and of course, you do have to avoid them because, well, planes and ships tend not to mix, especially if you slam into them at the speed that you are travelling. I did work out that you can actually shoot down the turrets, but of course you do have to pull up before, well, splatting against the bridge.

Yeah, this game was just way too hard for my liking, and I’m glad I never forked out any money for it when I was a kid, though I do suspect that maybe, just maybe, it was one of those el-cheapo games, which still doesn’t mean that it was value for money.

Well, not surprisingly, there is no Wikipedia page, but you can find some details (as scant as they are) on Lemon 64.