Naval combat wasn't this boring...
Still more arcade trash. Now its the turn of Stagger I/Red Hawk by AFEGA (Art Fiction Electronic Game)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DESCcBG2pM
Like Fire Hawk, Stagger I/Red Hawk gives you the option of picking 1 of the four available fighters.
They call this plane "Lightning" for a reason...
SUPER STAR (1P Germany / 2P United States): The YF-22 Lightning II (the prototype of the F-22 Raptor), piloted by Pegie. It uses a slightly wide frontal shot as its main weapon. Its Charge Shot releases a stream of bird-shaped fireballs. Its special attack fires a 3 way shot using large fireballs that damages enemies as they pass through them. Player 1 controls a blue with purple Super Star, while Player 2 is a yellow with red one.
RED HAWK (1P South Korea / 2P Canada): An original space ship piloted by Oliver. It's main shot is a curved laser that generates a shadow on the ship's movement when its maxed out. Its Charged Shot releases a frontal stream of purple wings. It's bomb consists on pelting the screen with bombs just like the F-14's Tomahawk bomb from Aero Fighters. Player 1 is a red and yellow ship and Player 2 appears as a blue and yellow aircraft.
PANAVIA AVIATION TORNADO ADV (1P Japan / 2P United Kingdom): Piloted by Leonardo. This jet's main weapon is to fire a frontal shot of javelins wide enough to cover some enemies that a regular linear shot can't. It's Charged shot is to release a spinning blade that splits into four. For its bomb, the Tornado releases a gigantic plasma fireball shaped like a plane, like the Shinden/Phantom II's Samurai Sword from the Strikers 1945 series. Player 1 is in a gray with blue jet while Player 2 is green with yellow.
LOCKHEED P-38 LIGHTNING (1P China / 2P France): Piloted by Arbeo. The P-38's main weapon is to fire a rapid frontal volley of missiles. Its Charged Shot is to unleash a slow-paced fire engulfed Missile fire similar to the Super Hornet's Homing Missile from Strikers 1945 III. It's bomb consists of firing 7 missiles that fly across the screen. Player 1 flies a green with yellow Lightning and Player 2 is a blue with purple plane.
It's the Blueberry Raptor VS the Rustic Bomber above the city. ¿Who will win?
The gameplay improves some of the aspects of Fire Hawk, starting off with the gameplay, as it introduces the support Sub-Weapon which can be twin orbs that shoot lightning bolts that increase your fire range or small Shindens that drop bombs causing explosions upon impact damaging nearby enemies. But some of the previous ones are removed like the wepaon variety. All the ships are now full frontal fire, making the player to rely on Charged Shots more often than in Fire Hawk. The Stage Clear result was also removed since it doesn't seem to count the remaining bombs or how many medals (now as Eagle head shaped emblems) you've picked in the level. Like in Aero Fighters, Player 2 can get P1's color if he/she starts the game first and Player 1 enters later.
Samurai Sword: Always imitated, but never equaled.
The graphics are an improvement over the game as they utilize something more 2D-like in the style of your common 16-32 bit arcade game and the colors are more vibrant and tolerable to the eyes. Like Fire Hawk, the game makes focus on the Military theme, but it utilizes all concepts of military on the enemy designs from prop-planes to jets like the A-10 and naval warfare, along with original modern and Sci-Fi space-ship looking enemies. The only "Cool" effect in the game was the shadows left by the Red Hawk when it fires the fully powered up laser fire. The rest is your generic stuff that becomes forgettable.
The ending of this game doesn't explain too much, since it only shows a digitzed photo of the game staff, a five persons team who made the game.
Will the real Player 1 please stand up?
There's a glitch of some sorts that makes Player 2's ship appear with Player 1's color when both players start the game at the same with with the same ship or both players advance to the next stage together, making simultaneous play more confusing and a proof that no one tested this game before releasing it.
The sound aspect is as bad as in Fire Hawk, while the music lasts longer than Fire Hawk's 5 second loops, the sound driver is as ear-bleeding as before with high pitched tunes that tries to be adventurous and combat-inducing in the style of Raiden II, but failing miserably in the execution. Speaking of Raiden, the game uses the middle sized ship explosion for most enemies and bomb attacks, only a few original sound effects can be heard like your shots and few exploding enemies, so this game ends up falling into the shmup plagiarism once again.
CURIOSITIES I / FUN FACT HAWK
- The missiles fired by the P-38 resembles the AIM-54 Phoenix and the AIM-120 AMRAAM (also known as "Slammer").
- While Fire Hawk was made by ESD, AFEGA is the developer of Stagger I/Red Hawk.
- It is unknown if both games are related besides their names, but they will be called the "Hawk" series.
In the end we have another bad shooter that wants your cash and I'm sure it was only a money loss for arcade operators back then.
Like Fire Hawk, stay out of Red Hawk.