Shoot'em Up! / Shoot'em Up! - Horizontal Scrolling · 1983
Airstrike
Published by Datamost, Inc.
atarimania.com — atari-400-800-xl-xe-games-airstrike-5995
Information
- Genre
- Shoot'em Up! - Horizontal Scrolling
- Language
- Machine Language
- Controls
- Joystick, Keyboard
- Players
- 1, 2 (alt.)
- Programmer(s)
- Riding, Steven A.
- Year
- 1983
- Publisher
- Datamost, Inc.
- Country
- USA
- License
- Prototype
- Medium
- Disk
- Rarity
- 0
Votes / Statistics
Rating: 5.8/10 · Votes: 25 · Downloads: 0 · Hits: 6,248
Additional Comments
Book / Magazine Reviews (2)
Electronic Games · October, 1982
The play mechanic is a scrolling shoot-out in the Scramble / Super Cobra familiar. The gamer maneuvers a laser-wielding aircraft through weapon-infested caverns and asteroid fields that become progressively more treacherous with each successful trip.
Designer S. A. Riding offers one and two-player modes with five levels of difficulty. Anti-aircraft missiles can be destroyed either before or after launch (which always occurs an instant before the player's ship passes overhead). The pilot can accumulate additional ammunition by destroying the clearly-marked ammo dumps along the way. The horizontally-scrolling spaceship can be moved vertically, with speed determined by left and right joystick movement.
After passing through the caverns, the ship enters an open area of space in which asteroids fall like raindrops on Piccadilly Circus. The space rocks can be either destroyed for points or simply avoided. At the end of the asteroid field, the aircraft reaches a space wall which can only be breached by blasting through the yellow airlock in its belly. This accomplished, the playfield changes background colors and begins the second scenario, which only differs from the first in difficulty.
The graphics are absolutely top-notch, perhaps the finest recreation of the sort of coin-op which inspired Airstrike in the first place. The audio mixes a potpourri of sounds, each representing a different visual element, from the hiss of the asteroids to the whoosh of a launching missile.
With Airstrike, English Software shows it can produce coin-op look-alikes with the best of them. A new game, however, with a more original play concept would establish this company as one of the best software producers around.
Electronic Fun · February, 1983 · Rating: 3/4
This game is loaded from a cassette or disk (you do not need the Atari BASIC cartridge to play.) The cassette version takes a good five minutes to load into the computer. But once it's in there, you're in for an evening of really top notch game play and cursing. As I said, it's awfully hard.
The one problem - and this is really a problem with the hardware - is the fact that the joystick has only one fire button. You need two for this game. So you fire the ship's laser cannon with the fire button and drop bombs by tapping the space bar.
The game is set up for one or two players. You get three attack ships and the enemy has ground/air missiles, exploding fission bombs, airlock doors and natural obstructions to block your way. There are also meteor showers to get through, and your own limited fuel and armament. You get more fuel (and points) by destroying a fuel dump, you get more ammunition (and points) by destroying an ammo depot. This is an excellent game, but suffers from being too difficult for beginners.
Don't try to go in too fast at first. Pull back on your ship so you can zap those surface-to-air missiles.
Comments (5)
drpeter — 19 Aug 2025
Has the interesting game mechanic that the speed of your craft- and indeed everything- increases as you move to the right across the screen. This takes some getting used to and contributes to the difficulty of the game, but it's worth persevering as once you have the hang of it it's a superb Scramble variant- best of the Atari 8-bit ones in my opinion.
the big m — 13 Apr 2025
The Good Airstrike was popular at game shows due to its resemblance to the arcade game Scramble! With it’s high res colours and spacey sound effects, Airstrike was the first English Software title. The Bad You have to develop playmaking strategies but get by this difficult game. The Bottom Line Airstrike checks the boxes on a good early Scramble clone.
GeoMan — 27 Feb 2016
At some point in one of the early stages there was an empty black space at the bottom of the screen. If you managed to position your craft there, you could fly outside the screen with no danger of losing your craft!
Greg B. — 21 Oct 2007
COULD have been an excellent game except for 2 things: 1. It's damn near impossible. 2. You have to use the SPACE BAR to drop bombs! This completely kills the game for me...I'm still not sure how this game got so popular but it's very over-rated, in my opinion.
Atari_E477 — 29 Dec 2005
This early (1982) Scramble™ replica was able to mimic the two-tone w/outline appearance of Scramble's terrain map, and utilized the Atari 800's fine scrolling technology. It is actually more playable than the screenshots would lead you to believe.