Twin Cobra: Desert Attack Helicopter
System: Genesis
Release Date: June 1991
Developer: Graphic Research
Publisher: Sega
Genre: Shoot ‘em Up
Climb behind the controls of a heavily armed chopper in Twin Cobra: Desert Attack Helicopter! You’ve been volunteered for a very dangerous and risky mission. The nation of Kaban is ruled by a demented dictator. He doesn’t care much about making the lives of his people better, but he sure has amassed a powerful military. He’s gotten himself on the wrong side of the allied governments, so it’s up to you to penetrate and destroy. There are ten levels and countless enemies in front of you. Good luck!
The general gameplay is that of a vertical scrolling shoot ‘em up. You take control of your helicopter and are equipped with unlimited ammo for your guns and a very limited stock of bombs. These bombs destroy things in their radius, but take a bit too long to deploy. (27:15) You can play with rapid fire on or off, but there’s no reason not to have it on, unless you want to break your controller’s B Button. There are all sorts of enemies that you need to rip through in order to survive. Helicopters increase in deadly efficiency as you move through the stages. Tanks and gun boats wait to get a bead on you before they shoot. Large military choppers, planes, and boats have heavy firepower, but drop powerups if you manage to destroy them.
The S powerups increase the strength of your weapon. There are many levels that you can collect. There are B icons that give you an extra bomb to drop on your enemies. The colored pod will change between the four different weapon colors. Red is the default and looks like missiles, as they level up, the spread becomes wider and the bullets become more destructive. Green is a laser beam, these increase in power and frequency at higher levels and are great at killing strong bosses. Blue is the spread gun that gets more angles of shot at higher levels. This is my weapon of choice. Yellow is a three way shot that goes up, left, and right. Higher levels add a fourth shot that shoots behind you, but the bullets are weak.
There are eight difficulty levels for you to choose from. The harder the choice, the more credits you get. I chose the default of Hard A with five choppers per credit, leading to 90 lives to get through 10 levels. Hard D gives you 30 credits for a possible total of 150 lives. You may think this is overkill and makes the game simple. I’m here to tell you that it does not. Twin Cobra is the epitome of the developers doing their best to torture you. Your chopper is slow and kind of big, making bullets hard to avoid. They can also be very difficult to see underneath other effects and colors present. Many enemies throw out a spread of bullets that don’t have a space big enough for you to avoid at certain angles.
I thought I’d play the game straight with all those lives, but by the 5th level, I had already gone through more than half of my credits, so I started to time travel. Levels are really generous with checkpoints, with a new one seemingly every ten or fifteen seconds of action. Of course, when you die, you lose all of your powerups and they are finite through the level. This can lead you to being in an area that you are grossly underpowered for. If you die enough, you are sent back to the previous checkpoint, which can be a godsend if it gets you extra power. Stages end with a boss battle and much to my surprise, you don’t have to defeat them to move on. A couple times after surviving for long enough, the screen started scrolling again to the end of the level.
Graphics: 1.5
Sprites and backgrounds a rough and the water isn’t even animated!
Sound: 2.5
Sounds are kind of overpowering, but the music is pretty good.
Gameplay: 2.0
Enemy placement is diabolical and the size and speed of your chopper is not ideal.
Difficulty: 1.0
You get dozens of lives, but they aren’t enough with all the obstacles in your path.
Fun Factor: 1.0
While playing, I wanted to bite and tear things, but I also wanted to get to the end.
Overall Rating: 1.6
Twin Cobra: Desert Attack Helicopter earns a C-. If you are a masochist, enjoy the pain this game will inflict upon you. If you aren’t, then feel free to stay away.