F-15 City War
System: NES
Release Date: 1990
Developer: Idea-Tek
Publisher: American Video Entertainment
Genre: Shoot ‘em Up
It’s up to you to defend our city in F-15 City War! Did you want to play Thunder Blade on the NES? Me neither. Look at this and tell me you think this is going to go well. Spoiler alert: it isn’t. There are five stages to play through with two different styles of shoot ‘em up.
Stages 1, 3, and 5 are behind the back. There are very few types of enemies that stand in your way. Tanks can be attacked with missiles by pressing the A Button. Even if you hit them head on, it doesn’t always register. Helicopters are easy to shoot down with machine guns when pressing the B Button. You have to keep moving to avoid bullets. The last level has you avoiding giant columns, which is a pain because the frame rate makes it difficult to see where it’s going to be.
Stages 2 and 4 are top down stages. These are simple and terrible. You’re in a jet plane and you move at a snail’s pace. The helicopters out speed you and it’s infuriating. There are airborne and ground based enemies and even the ability to earn a free guy by killing the red helicopter.
The end of the behind the back stages put you up against a boss. You just have to fly around the edges shooting non stop and sooner or later they’ll go down. The version I played had a warped background for the final boss and victory screen, so that was cool. I don’t believe Richard Frick, AVE president, when he says this game sold 60,000 copies.
Graphics: 0.5
The Master System did it better two years earlier, but this is so much worse. The frame rate hovers around 2. There’s a severe lack of detail on everything.
Sound: 0.5
Pew pew blam! Pew pew blam!
Gameplay: 0.5
I press a button and something happens. I don’t think it works properly and there’s very little to do.
Difficulty: 0.0
It was overly easy with no real challenge except for frustration from choppiness.
Fun Factor: 0.0
This game is too slow, too choppy, and too broken to be enjoyable.
Overall Rating: 0.3
F-15 City War earns an E. Just because you can technically get something to work doesn’t mean that it’s worth putting on a cartridge and selling to unassuming customers. Nintendo was right here.