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Hated this game growing up! I never could land the freaking plane!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: October 26, 2007
Author: Amazon User

NES Top Gun
Hated this game growing up! I never could land the freaking plane!
Impossible.

I got this game back in the mid 1980s when it came out. I hated it. Namely because I never could land the damn plane on the freaking aircraft carrier.

For a mid 1980s game, it's a fairly decent, if boring, flight simulator. But don't think you'll be getting a real flight simulator. You just chose your plane, then you you fly in this big boring blue frame for a while, and try to dodge missles. There's no real music. That's the whole game. There are four missions, but I only got to the third mission. There's a good reason for that.

But what makes this game so notorious for those who remember it (my generation, basically), is landing the plane on the aircraft carrier. When you land the plane, you get a long approach, in which the game will continually tell you to press up or down on the control pad, to made sure you are aligned properly. And no matter how meticulously you follow the instructions, YOU ALMOST ALWAYS CRASH. I can remember being a little kid and getting so frustrated at this game because I could never land. My brother landed once or twice, but that's about it.

The other bad part is, I think in mission 3, you have to fuel midair when a big fuel plane comes up on top of you. Just like landing, you have to press up or down to make sure the cable that will transport the gas from the fuel plane to your aircraft is properly aligned. Just like the landing on the aircraft, you can never make the connection. If the connection is not made, then the fuel aircraft will break the connection, leaving you to certain death as you will run out of fuel before you reach the aircraft carrier, which you won't be able to land on anyway.

The reason why I could never get past mission three is, if I remember correctly, you have three lives. You lose the first two lives on the first two missions because you can't land, then you lose your life because you can't fuel. I think the fourth mission has to do with a space shuttle, but I never knew any of my friends who had the game to get to that level.

Just a really bad game. Google Angry Video Game Nerd's review of it, he is, as usual, spot on (beware, he has a lot of adult language to the point his reviews are borderline obscene, but still funny as hell).

Oh, also, this game has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MOVIE. The movie even came out well before the game. NO CONNECTION at all.

dont play this

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 3
Date: July 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I hated this game and unlike other reviews im going to explain why. ok so the first mission is train for the next mission and you get your choice of missiles for more and less. What kind of choice is that pick more. I mean the idea is that the fewer missiles are more powerful but it only takes one shot to destroy a plane. Theres no music so its boring and in the end of the level you have to land on an aircraft and the screen gives you instructions on how to do it but its immposibele unless you got a power glove but lets not go in that. So dont get it, get Halo

If you liked the movie, you will like the game.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: June 13, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Well, if you're still playing NES games you are either really old or really poor. I'm really old. Basically this is the video game made to capitalize on the late 1980's movie _Topgun_ with tom cruise. I really liked that move. The first scene in the game is a sillouete of an F-14 and the Topgun theme song is playing. That scene is my favorite part of the game, sometimes I just put the game in to see that title screen and hear the music, and then turn it off. The gameplay is pretty good since you can shoot incoming missles with your cannon, and you can engage ships in battle. The two parts of the game that [stink] the most are (1)trying to re-fuel in mid-air, and (2)trying to land. I guess it takes patience to learn how to do both of these things, but since I'm old, I have none. I first played this game some time in the late 80's. Then I got a nintendo in the early 90's, then I finally got this game ...in the year 2001. This game will help you to come to terms with the fact that you will never really get to fly an F-14, because you're a nerd, not a flying ace. Hope this helps!

An all-time classic and an important part in Konami's long history!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 10, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I had known about this game for years, but I never got to play it until 1998. I was a bit afraid to like it or be a fan of it, because I wasn't a fan of the movie at the time. But the more I played it, the more I liked it. I've been a fan of this game long before I was a fan of the film. I didn't even become a fan of the film until 2002. Anyway, let's get to the review:This game has nothing to do with the movie, but based on the intro from the second Top Gun game (Top Gun:The Second Mission, also a good game), you ARE Maverick flying the plane. Maverick must complete 4 missions:The first mission is a training mission high up in the sky. The second mission is fought above the sea, the third one is fought in the desert, and the last one is fought in Outer Space. Despite having nothing to do with the film, this game is great. It's a flight sim, and it's easy to get into. It's not too complicated or confusing like most other flight sims are. You don't have to fly around and look for enemies. The enemies come to you. And that's good. You can think of it as the same gameplay as After Burner, only it's viewed from first person instead of third person. The game's really hard though. I don't think I've gotten past Mission 2 more than once. But Hard difficulty shouldn't drive someone away from a game. At the end of each mission, you need to land your plane on the carrier. For first timers, you might be screwing up alot, but once you have enough experience with the game, you should be making a successful landing more than you have the first few times you played, but you still might crash every once in a while. If you do crash the plane during landing, you still get to go to the next level, but it cost you a life. And if you crash the plane during landing with only one life left, it's Game Over. And there are no continues. And that sucks, but it's not that big a deal. The game only has 4 stages like I said. And I wouldn't want a game that's so easy I can beat it on my first try, because that just takes the fun out of it. It puts up a good-enough challenge so it's not so easy, because a game isn't fun if it's too easy. It's also not fun if it's too hard either, but this game is just right. There's also sometimes where you have to refuel your plane and the controls for these sequences are the same as the ones for landing, but refueling is easy. The music, well, there's not much. There's a nice 8-bit version of the Top Gun Anthem played at the copyright screen and the end, but there's only 3 other BGMs in the game:

One BGM is the one for mission briefing
Another one has it's places swapped in different versions of the game:In the US version, this BGM is played during the demonstration sequence and when you need to refuel the plane, and in the japanese version, it's played during the main gameplay, unlike the US version where the music is completely absent.

Overall:Top Gun's one of the most important titles in Konami's long history. It was also their first licensed game ever. And this cart was a big hit back when it came out. It sold about 3 million units. I've been a big fan of the game since 1998, and I even own the japanese Famicom edition of it. I recommend it. You can easily get into this game even if you aren't too crazy about flight sims.

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