Vimm's Lair: NES Reviews - Sky Shark

Nintendo
Sky Shark

Graphics:
Sound:
Gameplay:
Overall:
7.63
8.44
8.50
8.56
Votes: 16
Reviews: 1


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Reviewer: Homedogg Date: Jul 30, 2004
Wow, even now I consider this to be ONE of the hardest games of all time. Contrary to belief this game actually doesn't have an end to it. There's seven levels of intense action and all of them extremely hard. But after you beat the seventh level (My bro did that) the game repeats itself and you start on the first level. I could only get to the fourth level, and I have been playing this game since I was about 5 years old, I'm 14 now. This game is that hard.
The concept of this game is to fly your plane in world war 2 - across oceans bombing ships and their turrets, through jungles blowing up bunkers, and over railways stopping trains. Of course there’s always plenty of tanks and planes trying to blow the crap out of your plane. Your job is to find that crack of open sky in a minefield of bullets to ensure you don't lose your last man and get game over. Your plane is equipped with an unlimited supply of bullets (they still look more like missiles to me, ah well), and 3 bombs to drop when you get in hairy situations, or when you want that big tank gone fast.

Graphics: 7
Graphics were nothing special. Just average for the time. But they got the job done. I remember watching my brother get to the last level. Your plane took up about a 30th of the screen and the last bomber took the rest of the screen up must have been a b-52 or something. If you shoot a tank with one round of bullets the top blows off and the tank stops but he's not dead until you hit him again then he will blow up and leave an explosion behind.

Sound: 10
Gotta love the sound track. The same drum line, almost techno, is what you will here through most of the songs then with a couple of keyboards you got your songs. Of course they made up some cool stuff to really get you in a bullet dodging, button mashing, bunker blowing, turret totaling mood.

Gameplay: 10
Best dang part of the game, game play made it all happen. You can kill a tank in one hit if you get a power up (oh wait did I mention these?) yep, a power-up will either give you one more bomb (a box with a B in the middle) or a spread power-up (box with an S in the middle floating around) that gives you more bullets to shoot at once. You start out with two bullets per round but you can double that to 4, then 4 spread out, then 5, then 7 I think it was. After the third level planes change their strategy from flying straight at you to sweeping hit and run tactics. They start to make the S's harder and harder to get, they become a distraction to make you die trying to pick one up. It took me about 2 years to get past the boat part on the second level. A big plane starts shooting at you then a ship comes up with about 12 turrets shooting at you then about 2 sets of planes flying at you. Of course just forget the plane and use a bomb to take out as many turrets as you can praying you will survive. If you do you get to the third level where everything gets a notch harder. After a while I could beat the whole first level without dying once. Most of my friends that play this for their first time get about halfway through the first level and then get game over or give up. I still never get tired of playing this game and it is my goal to someday beat it. Until then I won't stop playing it.

Overall: 10
This is one of the first video games I ever played and the one that got me hooked on them. Of course among the others were super Mario bros. 1, legend of Zelda, and some others I can't remember. My brother now has roughly 100 Nintendo games. I hope they will someday make a sequel to this game and at the same time I kind of don't want them to as they could ruin the greatness this game had. This is the game that honed my skills in 2-D space shooters like gradius, gradius 3, life force, earth defense force, super nova, super R-Type, biometal, and thunder force V. Hence this game gets a 10 on my list.

This is a great game that was one of the starting and best 2-D shooters ever made. I think you should get this game in your hands if you have a Nintendo. I doubt you will be disappointed, and if you are then you suck :p.

Homedogg©