'Air Fortress' on the NES

Air Fortress is an interesting game to say the least. I recall first playing it when I was like 8. My uncle had borrowed it from a friend of his. For whatever reason, we called it Space Man, so when I went looking for it as an adult, I had no idea what the hell I was looking for.

Anyway, you play as this little dude on this vehicle that reminds me of the speeders from Star Wars, and you fly at top speeds from left to right like any standard, 2D, space shooter, and you try collecting B’s for bombs, and E’s for energy, which you’ll need when you actually arrive at and enter the air fortress.

Once in the fortress, you ditch your speeder, and you float around through hazards, blasting enemies and trying to reach this thing that reminds me of the master control program from South Park; yes, I’m aware he’s from Tron, but these things remind me of South Park.

They look the same, right?

At any rate, you blast the master control program and then float on back to your ship in order to get the hell out, and on to the next fortress. The cool thing is that you move in eight directions via the d-pad; you don’t jump and land, you float up and down, which adds a neat level of difficulty to the stages especially since your blaster knocks you backwards as you fire. Furthermore, when you reach some of the later air fortresses, you have multiple paths to choose from, and I believe you have to go through every path in order to destroy the MCP's, and then find your ship.

You often find your ship first, and then have to backtrack, but here’s the kicker—you only have so much energy, and if you use it all, or you take too many hits, your energy drops to zero, and you’re toast, but wait! There’s more!

While hauling butt back to your ship, the air fortress begins to shake and crumble. If you don’t reach the exit in time, you’re dead. There is no timer. You just have to hurry.

The Good:

This is one of only a few 2D shooters that also turns into a platformer, and the platforms are based on flying not jumping.

I know there are a few other games in which you fly around blasting other ships, and then hop out of your ship to run and gun, but Air Fortress is the only game that has this unique control. I just really like the gameplay. It’s fun, it’s addictive, and it isn’t so difficult that you wanna smash the TV

The graphics are great considering it’s a Nintendo game. The controls are smooth and easy to pick up. There’s enough variation in the stages to keep you interested, and the difficulty progresses in a natural fashion.

The Bad:

Mostly, the music kind of sucks; it’s the same few themes throughout most of the game. They’re not terrible themes, but it would have been nice to have different music play for each fortress. Also, the overall design of the backgrounds and the enemies are uninspired. This doesn’t detract from enjoying the game, though. Still, with all the thought they put into the mechanics, something other than gray backgrounds would have been nice. Another point on the backgrounds is that while you’re flying to the air fortress, sometimes, you can’t tell what’s in the foreground, and what’s in the background, causing your imminent demise.

Also, once you’ve played through the game 2 or 3 times, you’ll know the optimal routes to travel in order to complete each fortress as quickly and efficiently as possible, thus removing any difficulty at all. In the end, there isn’t much of a replay value, but it’s cool to take turns with friends and watch them go the wrong way, run out of energy, and croak.

Overall, I’ll give Air Fortress a B- score. This is a game I enjoy playing once in a while, but I usually just reach the third or fourth fortress and give up before moving on to something more entertaining. Mostly, I score it as high as I do because it’s creative in its design and gameplay; it’s definitely miles above Dash Galaxy and any of the Defender games, and pretty ambitious for a NES game!