Quick Play - AH-3 Thunderstrike (Thunderhawk) [Sega CD]

Thunderhawk (or AH-3 Thunderstrike in North America) is an arcade Helicopter flight sim, developed and published by Core Design for Amiga and MS-DOS in 1992, and Sega CD in 1993. In the game players are tasked with flying an Apache helicopter through various missions, such as stopping pirates, destroying a downed stealth fighter, or preventing arms running. Players advance through the game, earning points for completed goals and destroyed enemies, while receiving promotions and medals based on the players score and actions in the campaign. Graphically the game is pretty good, and takes advantage of the Sega CD pretty well. The Music is great too, and also makes good use of the expanded abilities and storage of the Sega CD. Controls on the other hand are little hard to use. With no shoulder buttons on the Genesis Controller, multiple buttons must be used to make the helicopter raise or lower, which means moving is a bit of a hassle, not something you want in a flight simulator. Overall I like this game, though I do think it was greatly eclipsed by it's sequel, Thunderstrike 2 (Firestorm: Thunderhawk 2, PS1, Saturn, MS-DOS), which is essentially the same game with expanded gameplay, better controls, and arguably better graphics. A third game, Thunderhawk/Thunderstrike: Operation Phoenix, was released for PS2, and is also pretty solid, though maybe not quite as good as Thunderstrike 2.