Video Game / A.S.P. Air Strike Patrol

aka: Desert Fighter

Bring the rain!

A fairly obscure Isometric Shoot 'Em Up / Simulation Game (in the same vein as the Strike series), A.S.P. Air Strike Patrol (known in Europe as Desert Fighter) was produced in 1995 by SETA Corporation for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

The game itself takes place during a thinly-veiled Gulf War. A Middle Eastern country, Zarak, is invading its smaller neighbor Sweit. In early 1990, the P.D.F. launches Operation Desert Corrado, with the aim of stopping the Zarak military's advance. As part of the Air Strike Patrol, you fly either F-15E Strike Eagles or A-10 Thunderbolt IIs in support of the Coalition.

What's really notable about Air Strike Patrol is that you're not simply tasked with going out there and completing your missions; you also have to do it while managing public opinion and without being wasteful of weapons, fuel, and aircraft. Three different gauges measure how effective and aggressive you are in destroying enemy units and targets, how good you are at managing supplies, and how well the Coalition's actions are received by the rest of the world—all of which rides on your actions. This adds a whole new layer of complexity in the game, by giving players a taste of what it's like when soldiers and commanders are put in this very same position.

This game received an equally obscure Spiritual Sequel in Nintendo 64 called Chopper Attack (Wild Choppers in Japan), however, it was a pure Actionized Sequel with the game instead taking place in a Banana Republic, none of the logistics operations present in this game, and player now piloting one of many types of attack helicopter.

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A.S.P. Air Strike Patrol provides examples of:

• Always Accurate Attack: Zaraki forces—both their ground vehicles and the MiGs—have perfect target leading. If you don't change your speed or direction when they fire a shot, you will get hit by it.
• Battle Theme Music: Any time a MiG engages you, the background music changes depending on the plane you're flying. If it's an F-15E, the music is energetic and encouraging. If it's an A-10, however, the music is threatening and dramatic, as if underlining that you're not the hunter—you're the hunted.
• Bottomless Magazines:
  • Your aircraft's cannons have these. You can hold down the trigger all day without running out of ammo or hurting your logistics score. This is the main advantage the A-10 has over the F-15E, as its cannon fires downward and is great for destroying enemy vehicles without wasting supplies.
  • Averted with missiles and bombs; once you run out of those, you've got to return to base to rearm.
• Bullet Hell: If enough Zaraki forces are in one place (such as in the last mission).
• Challenge Run: Getting the Perfect Ending requires you to find and destroy every SCUD missile, which is by far the hardest task in the game, as the locations of the launcher sites are always randomly generated.
• Color-Coded Armies: Allied tanks are green (the soldiers wear tan). Zarak's ground forces are tan. Civilian vehicles are red.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Zaraki MiGs come in three flavors: Green (uses guns only), Tan (uses missiles only), and Red (uses both).
• Crippling Overspecialization: You'll have three sets of possible loadouts for both the F-15E and the A-10 which are unlocked as you progress. In all cases, you only get one type of missile or bomb to take on the sortie. Thankfully the choice isn't permanent, but it does take several hours for base crews to change armaments, and you don't have all the time in the world.
  • One of the F-15E loadouts features AIM-9 Sidewinders. This gives you an unmatched ability to knock down Zaraki MiGs, but leaves you with no way to attack ground targets (and therefore complete your missions) unless you return to base and choose a different armament.
  • Taking an F-15E loaded with air-to-ground weapons might seem like a good compromise between an all-air F-15E and an all-ground A-10 since it can fire on other aircraft with the cannon, but you'll often find yourself wasting precious time and fuel while locked in a "turning fight" with MiGs this way.
  • All the A-10 loadouts are strictly air-to-ground, including the cannon—which, since it has infinite ammo, makes it easier to keep the Supplies score up. However, you have no way of fighting back against MiGs if you haven't spent a sortie shooting them down with an F-15E first.
  • MiGs appear a limited number of times in each level however, meaning you can start with a F-15E that's fully air-to-air to deal with the MiGs, then switch over to the fully air-to-ground A-10 and take care of the rest.
• Digitized Sprites: In the credits sequence, one person is listed as having made 3D models for the game, implying that the sprites were made from pre-rendered CGI assets.
• Friend or Foe?:
  • Be careful where you're aiming. If you hit your own troops, it will make the news.
  • If you're using AIM-65 Mavericks, you'll see an indicator in the top left corner of the screen telling you if you've locked onto a friendly or enemy target.
• Hero Insurance: World opinion will say otherwise if you bomb civilian buildings during your missions.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: GNN will air reports highlighting your screw-ups if you screw up too much.
• High-Speed Missile Dodge: Your aircraft can out-turn missiles, and in many case it's possible to shake off missiles through sheer maneuvers alone. This is handy for managing your supplies rating, since expended countermeasures are counted the same as expended munitions.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: No matter if you're flying an F-15E or an A-10, your aircraft will carry several times the amount of missiles and bombs that their Real Life counterparts can carry.
• It's Up to You: No effort is made to make you feel like you're part of a larger air campaign, as your plane seems to be the only Coalition combat aircraft in the skies. There's plenty of friendly forces on the ground, but they mostly mill around doing nothing, and rarely fire on enemy forces.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Most things in the game are unmistakably renames and references to the real GulfWar.
  • Operation Desert Corrado (instead of Desert Storm), anyone?
  • Global News Network (GNN) is a clear take on CNN.
  • Zarak and Sweit are very thinly disguised versions of Iraq and Kuwait.
  • Zarak's leader, who goes unnamed but is seen on billboards around Area 2 (Zarak's capital), looks like the splitting image of Saddam Hussein.
  • Baghdad's Hands of Victory monument can be seen in the background of the image that accompanies your debriefing after completing Mission 7.
• Man Behind the Man: Aliens are manipulating Zarak's leaders. Their forces are never directly confronted in the game, only mentioned and rumored in briefings.
• Misguided Missile: It's rare, but it's possible for Zaraki missiles to be tricked into blowing up their own buildings.
• Missile Lock-On: For AIM-9 Sidewinders and AGM-65 Mavericks.
• Mook Chivalry:
  • No matter how many MiGs the Zarakis have in the air, only one of them will attack you at any time—and only when that MiG is shot down does the next one appear in the mission zone (after a brief respite that is).
  • Zaraki forces usually won't go for the Macross Missile Massacre—they'll only launch one at a time. If you're already tangling with an enemy missile, any enemy vehicles capable of launching one will wait until you've defeated it (or until it blows up on you) before launching another.
• Multiple Endings: The Force, Supplies, and Opinion meters all determine the kind of ending you get. If any of those are lacking, the ending will only be merely an okay ending (for example, you'll be told that The Gulf War was a political disaster if public opinion is the lowest of the three).
  • If your Force score is low, you'll be informed of the many families wearing yellow ribbons, worried by the large number of coalition casualties. Then you'll be told to go back to study at war college.
  • If your Opinion score is low, the epilogue states that the heavy civilian casualties, caused by the SCUD attacks and bombing of non-military targets, led to numerous outbreaks of terrorism and warned not to enter politics, as it would take a minor miracle to regain the public's trust.
  • If your Supplies score is low, you'll learn that the war was a financial disaster due to your carelessness with munitions and craft.
  • If you happen to fail the final mission in any way, you get treated to watching a nuclear holocaust which ends in aliens conquering the Earth.
  • Manage to win the game with high enough marks in your force/supplies/opinion meters and you'll be treated to a hero's welcome. This is NOT easy to do.
• Nintendo Hard: The final mission gives you three chances before aliens invade and take over Earth, being a absolute Bullet Hell where you have limited resources. Earlier you had more of a chance but then there are a number of endings.
  • Managing logistics supplies and targeting was not commonplace during the day. You essentially had to destroy all your assigned targets in one go, without being shot down or taking a hit or running out of fuel, and take out as make Zaraqi forces as you can without killing friendlies or civilians. Even then it's nigh impossible to not get the bad ending due to casualties, cost or condemnation of the war.
  • Then there are the scud launchers. The second mission involves destroying every single one before they can launch and their location is random and changed each game. Even after this mission you still have to hunt down and destroy every last one for the rest of the game, they are not on radar and again randomized and changed. Miss just one and you get the bad ending.
• Nitro Boost: The F-15E can use its afterburners to provide a temporary speed boost, to get out of trouble quickly (or into trouble if so desired).
• Non-Standard Game Over: Failing to complete a mission in time isn't the only way to get a Game Over—waste too many bombs and missiles, lose your aircraft too many times, or run public opinion into the ground and the Coalition will be forced to pull out, with the commander giving you a nastygram in the process.
• Outside-Genre Foe: The aliens. Their involvement is foreshadowed in some of the mission debriefings, but there's still not much information on why they're doing what they're doing.
  • In the spiritual sequel Chopper Attack, you directly fight the aliens in the true last level if played in Hard difficulty.
• Palette Swap:
  • The MiGs are all the same model, apparently, but their colors signify how they'll attack you.
  • The U.N. tanks (M60A3 Pattons) use the same sprites as the Zaraki T-80s, just colored green.
  • Zaraki Technicals are Tan-Colored Trucks while Civilians drive Red Trucks.
• Reporting Names: Some of the Soviet vehicles and weapons in the game are referred to by their NATO reporting names, although not always spelled correctly—and in one case, the wrong reporting name for a missile type is used.
• Shout-Out: Some of the voice clips heard in the game are soundbites from Top Gun:
  • When flying an F-15E, your commander will tell you "Get 'em outta here!" at the start of a sortie. This is from Commander Tom "Stinger" Jordan, USS Enterprise's CAG, during the movie's opening MiG confrontation.
  • If you get hit during a mission, your pilot will shout "I'm hit, I'm hit!" This is from Lieutenant Tom "Iceman" Kazansky during the MiG battle near the end of the movie.
• Shown Their Work: The F-15E (though just referred to as an "F-15") and A-10 both have access to the same kind of weapons they're typically armed with from the time period. On the other hand, despite the accuracy used in the planes flown by the players, Zaraki vehicles aren't based on what the Ba'athist Iraq forces had during The Gulf War. They are still mostly based on real military vehicles, though; the Soviet MiG-29 Fulcrum, Mi-24 Hind, T-80 main battle tank, SA-4 Ganef (spelled "Gannif"), and the British Rapier SAM (including a tracked variant called the "Rolland"). The only real problems are that the T-80s have anti-aircraft missiles (they have anti-tank missiles in Real Life), and that there are trucks said to be armed with "Swatter" anti-aircraft missiles (a NATO reporting name given to a type of Soviet anti-tank missile).
• Slave to PR: If you want to get that Golden Ending and keep The Gulf War from being seen as a second Vietnam War, you've got to do your best to keep the public happy while still completing your missions. No pressure.
• Timed Mission:
  • All missions in the game are time-sensitive, but the time you have for each is measured in hours and days, so you won't run out while in the mission zone. Rather, fractions of hours are deducted every time you head into the combat zone, return to base for refueling and rearming, or when switching aircraft/weapon loadouts while at base. If you crash or run out of fuel during a mission however, a huge chunk of time is wasted in rescuing you (to say nothing of what it means for your Supplies rating).
  • During missions, being subject to a fuel gauge means in most cases you will have to return to base during the mission in order to refuel at the very least. Linger too long in the mission zone and run out of fuel, you crash and take a big hit in your logistics score for crashing.
• Universal Ammunition: Your countermeasures, missiles, and bombs all draw from the same reserve—it's probably why your plane has such a high ammo count in the first place.

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