Reviews

Top Gun the game is a sodding poor effort at bringing the action and excitement of the movie to the speccy.

It's neither a simulation nor a good dog-fight game and you'll be bored witless within 15 minutes of starting it up.

Do yourself a favour and play Fighter Pilot instead!

Top Gun came out from the hand of Mike Lamb, the author of the known titles, such as arcanoid, batman, robocop, wec lemans, Regenade series and (with kizza's help) steve davis snooker.

This game is like Counter Strike, it's pointless to fight against stupid bots. This game designed specially for two players. And it offers great fun, especially if there are two good pilots playing.

OK, spectrum's gfx capabilities isn't enough for this kind of job but game is not sluggish, it only lacks detail on gfx. Lamb favor playability over gfx detail. The game is not complicated also: this is not a simultaion, this is a fast arcade game, where you try to shot down your friend, make fun of it, and then let him try again to shoot you. There is no story and no goal other than dog fighting. It's like Quake 3 Areana on a empty landscape.

It's running on plain 48k with full sound effects, nice enough graphics and really nice title music.

I accept, this game didn't age well due to current position of 3d games, but if you were living in 1988 and you got a wannabe pilot friend, there was no alternative to this game. You gotta fly and fire those missiles to your friends on Top Gun! Before playing, don't forget to read instructions. There are pre configured keys to control your speed and weapons.

1987 Ocean Software (UK)
by Mike Lamb and Ronny Fowles

Movie licenced games are generally crap. The industry knows teens want anything related to a popular movie, specially games. So why bother with the quality?
The two-player mode is basicaly the only good thing in the game, otherwise boring and repetitive.
If you have played other fighter pilot simulators, you want need to waste any time on this.

Had this as a kid, never liked it. 22 years on, still don't like it, in fact I probably dislike it more.

From the moment you start playing you are pretty much bored instantly and nothing improves your feelings for the game, it's just the same, a boring drag with little to get you hooked. Once bored, always bored. It's attempt to be a flight simulator and dogfight shooter...and it fails on both accounts...by a considerable margain it has to be said.

So this is a very dull movie licence game. Luckily this wasn't the only time Tom Cruise graced onto the Spectrum...oh wait the other time was Days of Thunder, and that my friends is even worse. His luck's as bad as Arnie Schwarzenegger. Ho hum.

And having sat through two utterly pathetic movie licensed game, Moonwalker and The Running Man, how can I now not review one of the more infamously crap movie licensed games on the Spectrum. Who on earth thought this would make a good idea for any game let alone a movie licensed one? It's supposed to be a dogfight shooter type game but without the fun of shooting anything, well I mean I can at least shoot someone and kill him, but when I do seemingly die with him, almost as if it's punishment for killing him. The Commodore 64 version has legendary Comic Bakery music but this has nothing, no music, no graphics, no thrills, no enjoyment and no game. It's right up there with Highlander as among the very worst in movie licensed games and in Ocean's game library. And that was it for Tom Cruise on the ZX Spectrum, except for when Mindscape released the equally abysmal Days of Thunder three years later.