Introduction

Developer: Microprose
Publisher: Hasbro Interactive
Gunship! official page: http://www.hasbrointeractive.com/microprose/product.cfm?product=99676

This is not a drill

Earlier this week, Microprose sent Firingsquad an alpha copy of its upcoming combat helicopter simulator, Gunship! Old school PC players will remember Gunship!'s predecessor, Gunship 2000, back from the 386/486 days. Things have changed a lot in the PC graphics department since then, most notably the proliferation of hardware accelerated 3D graphics. Gunship! (I really hate using that exclamation mark in the middle of a sentence) will not disappoint in that regard, sporting an impressive Direct3D based graphics engine. Ironically enough, it's a 2D element of the game, the trees, that does the most to visually separate Gunship! from its predecessors.

A quartet of Havocs

A closer look

Foliage!

Yes, there are trees in Gunship! and there are a lot of them! No longer do you have to pop up from behind hills to unmask your weapons - this can be done from behind a stand of trees, just like a real helicopter pilot might in real life. The trees are just 2D sprites, but this only becomes apparent when you get up real close to them. From a distance, the foliage is very real looking, doing a lot to enhance the player's immersion into the game. No more fighting on barren "moonscapes," as you might have done in previous helicopter sims. Yes, we would have liked real 3D trees, but the strain it would place on the computer would have been enormous, particularly with how far out the horizon line extends in Gunship!. All things considered, we'll take the trade off for speed. These 2D trees are still deformable!

Firing missiles

That nose cone makes me think of Goofy

No chunking

What amazed us the most about Gunship! is the speed of its graphics engine. As we mentioned earlier, the horizon line in the game is fairly distant, so there are a lot of objects that might need rendering at any given time - other helicopters, weapons in flight, various ground vehicles, city buildings, farm houses, etc. Still, at 1024x768x32, with all the graphical goodies turned up, the game ran like a champ, with no noticeable slowdown. That's rather impressive considering that my system (P3 450, 128MB RAM, G400 Max) is now middling performer in this age of near GHz Athlons, Coppermines, and GeForce cards.

Rear shot of firing rockets

Gotta love that smoke streak