Seek & Destroy

""Apache One, you are cleared for take off!" Take control of an Apache helicopter in a series of daring missions behind enemy lines. You're fully loaded with a deadly arsenal of weapons to Seek out and Destroy hostile units. Fast & Frantic 360 degree scrolling Arcade Action. Multi-phase missions spread across desert, sea, snow and jungle scenarios. Varied selection of military weapons including interceptor and air to ground missiles. Co-pilot feature-Player One pilots the Apache, Player Two mans the weapons. Limitless gameplay opportunities after all 14 missions are completed, go on to new levels of difficulty."

Seek & Destroy is a top down helicopter shoot em up not unlike dessert strike except here we don't have any real story narrative to follow, just a series of missions blasting everything and making it back for the next one. There are only fourteen missions making for quite a short game. But wait, there's more! After completing the game you can chose to end it there or loop the game again with the difficulty stepped up. If you have the lives to spare then.. why not! The game has certainly stepped up difficulty by loop three. The game always loops back to mission four.

The game stands out for being all about the action. A few seconds after take off, you will fighting off other attack choppers then soon flying over enemy units. Of course the trick is not to fly over them but let them shoot off the rockets or bullets then turn into them and blast them away. Some building will drop extra weapons or extra fuel and shield and you need to land to pick those up. You get six weapon types to choose from, useful for taking out specific enemies or a whole group. Taking to many hits will force you to crash land. A cool feature is that you can guide the chopper down and take out some enemies in the blast. You can also accidently crash land if you move while landing.

In the longplay I go through the initial fourteen missions fairly casually. There are a few tense moments when fuel is low but the idea is to go for the target and not try to kill everything. After completing the game, I continue the next loop with the intent of spending the extra lives to show game over. Note there is no difficulty option in the menus so you cant start on hard loop. You can see additional loops in the 1200 longplay.

Overall, this is a great game on the Amiga. It is an A500 game that takes advantage of extra memory to provide more voice samples which is another notable feature of this game. Running on the CD32 (and A1200), it supposably has extra gfx features, but I couldn't tell you what they are. The CD32 game does have additional soundtracks that play over the mission briefings. No difference to the floppy release in gameplay.

00:00:00 Title Music
00:02:35 M1 (Operation Heatwave - Phase 1)
00:04:00 M2 (Operation Heatwave - Phase 2)
00:05:18 M3 (Operation Heatwave - Phase 3)
00:07:45 M4 (Operation Sand Storm - Phase 1)
00:11:05 M5 (Operation Sand Storm - Phase 2)
00:14:00 M5 (Operation Sand Storm - Phase 3)
00:16:38 M7 (Operation Tsunami - Phase 1)
00:18:45 M8 (Operation Tsunami - Phase 2)
00:20:30 M9 (Operation Blizzard - Phase 1)
00:24:00 M10 (Operation Blizzard - Phase 2)
00:27:15 M11 (Operation Blizzard - Phase 3)
00:30:15 M12 (Operation Monsoon - Phase 1)
00:32:25 M13 (Operation Monsoon - Phase 2)
00:35:10 M14 (Operation Monsoon - Phase 3)
00:37:10 Ending