Flightmare

Overview

Flightmare is an old split-view arcade game made for the 8086 back in the year 1984 with CGA graphics and keyboard controls. Although the controls take some getting used to, it's an entertaining bit of obscure PC gaming history.

Gameplay

The game itself takes place in two phases. The map phase shows the overall location of the factories, airstrip, blimp, and player-controlled biplane, as well as all of the enemy forces. The numeric keypad allows the player to move in any direction on the map, preferably towards something that presents a danger to the airplane factories you're supposed to be guarding. Once the player is close enough to a target, you can press space to engage the enemy and switch to the combat phase. If the player is too near an enemy plane squadron or guided missile and all of the trucks and motorcycles are destroyed, the combat phase is entered automatically.

The combat phase has two separate displays, one for a side-scrolling view and the other top-down. Control on the side view is governed by the numeric keypad while the top-down view is controlled by the alpha keys on the left side of the keyboard (Q, E, Z, and C are the corners). Pressing W and A doesn't move diagonally, incidentally; you have to use Q instead.

To shoot the enemy Vandals, you must first line up your machine gun with a target on the top-down screen, then - in the case of trucks and motorcycles - skim the ground low enough to riddle them with bullets. Since the biplane is apparently incapable of proper strafing and can only shoot horizontally, you run the risk of plowing into the sand dunes and losing a plane. There's not much to do about this except try to keep an eye on when the ground level raises, and it is perfectly capable of changing far too fast to compensate for if you're too low to the ground.

The Vandal motorcycle gangs aren't all that difficult. They can't shoot back and they go down if you graze the riders' heads with a bullet. The armored trucks, on the other hand, are a bit nastier. You have to blow out their tires. Since their tires are lower to the ground than your machine gun is, this means you have to wait for a hill and toss some bullets out there while hoping desperately the hill doesn't decide to be too steep to evade.

If the motorcycles or trucks reach a factory, they destroy it. The same goes for your airfield where all your spare planes are located. Airplanes are only a threat to the biplane you are currently piloting, although they do like to guard the motorcycles and trucks as well as your invulnerable, ammo-refilling blimp. Only when all the ground forces are gone can the airplanes actively engage the player.

On some stages, once the motorcycles and trucks are gone, the Vandals launch a 'heat seeking missile'. It tracks down the player's plane in the map phase and switches to the combat phase once it reaches you. In combat, the missile slowly moves from left to right, tracking the player's vertical and lateral movement with a bit of a lag. It's fairly trivial to get behind the missile and toss a bullet into it, destroying it and ending the stage. If there is no missile, the stage is completed once the ground forces are gone. For each factory remaining, the player gets one additional plane and one more factory is constructed at the beginning of every stage.

Each stage is associated with a letter in the Greek alphabet, from Alpha to Omega, along with a title such as 'Sky Battle' and 'Born Losers'. Once the game is over you receive a rating, based on the stage you were on. The lowest rating is 'Alpha Turkey', the highest 'Omega Flying Leatherneck'.