Radar Lock

Overview

Radar Lock is an After Burner style air-to-air combat game for the Atari 2600. Programmer Doug Neubauer reused the Solaris engine to speed up development.

Gameplay

Two joysticks are used whether playing the single- or two-player mode. In single-player mode, the left joystick controls movement and the button fires the currently selected weapon. The right joystick is used to select one of three weapons, and the fire button fires the afterburner to speed up the jet while held. The two-player mode is similar, but the button functions are swapped so that player one flys the plane, and player two selects and fires the weapons.

• Machine Gun: The player begins with 2550 rounds of ammunition. Machine gun fire will destroy all targets, but the larger bombers and fighters absorb a good deal of machine gun fire.
• Guided Missiles: Guided missiles will cause heavy damage to any aircraft after a successful lock.
• Proximity Missiles: Proximity missiles will destroy all enemies except for bombers and stealth fighters, which are currently in view.

Gameplay consists of a basically automated take-off phase, a combat phase, and refueling phase. There are five missions:

• Mission 1: Red, easy-to-hit, unarmed drones are the only targets.
• Mission 2: Interceptors are introduced. With no rear gun, they are simple to destroy from behind.
• Mission 3: Yellow Patrollers follow fixed routes. They are more dangerous than Interceptors. Additionally, Bombers appear, which have rear-fire capability, and absorb a good deal of damage.
• Mission 4: Stealth fighters are introduced. They are immune to long-range radar, and are heavily armed.
• Mission 5: Super bombers, with guided missiles are introduced. The player must destroy all five to finish the game.

Between stages, the player must refuel to proceed to the following stage. Refueling consists of locating the refueling jet on the long term radar. Next, the afterburner is used to catch up to, and match the speed. Finally, the player must carefully position the aircraft's nose into the refueling hose.