Rob's Retro Rambles - Harrier Attack! (C64)
10Over halfway through the 10 Computer Hits compilation for C64 now, onto the first game of tape 2 with Durrel Software's Harrier Attack! (Their exclamation mark, not mine.)
First released on the Oric-1 and quickly converted to as many formats as possible while the Falklands war was still ongoing as it meant it was selling like hot cakes, it caused a bit of a fuss at the time. I know it may be hard to believe now by looking at it, especially given how much more realistic games have become in the intervening 33 years (!) but the game's setting was SO close to the ongoing conflict at the time that it felt more than a little opportunistic, y'know? Ok, they never actually mentioned the Falkland Islands, or Port Stanley, or anything like that, the adverts just said that you were flying a harrier, taking off from an aircraft carrier and attacking an island that was "nowhere in particular" (and I don't recall Falcon Patrol getting any kind of stick for its Middle East setting), but I'm sure all the news footage at the time didn't hurt their sales any.
In a short piece in Your Spectrum issue 4, an unnamed spokesperson said, "we had people complaining about it, because of the weapons, the violence and all that shooting. So, in our latest game, Scuba Dive, we didn't even allow the odd harpoon to be fired. But still people complained."
People, eh? Tch!
As usual with my non-arcade stuff; loaded from original cassette (well, the Beau Jolie 10 computer hits compilation release, anyway) on my trusty breadbin model C64 and played with a Konix Navigator hotshot joystick. No emulation here!