The little I did know about this game came from the Top Secret Passwords book that came with a Nintendo Power subscription. I never had a Nintendo Power subscription, I saved up the money for it at one point, but my parents wouldn’t cut me a check. They probably figured that reading about video games was just as mind-rotting as playing them. At some point in middle school my best friend at the time let me borrow his copy of the password book and, uh, I guess I’m still borrowing it (sorry Guza).
In any case, I vividly remember looking through that book and reading about all the games I had never played, or even heard of. Air Fortress was one of those games that just looked silly. The silliness was further compounded by the hero and his ridiculous name: Hal Bailman.
To start things off, why the hell was this game called Air Fortress. There are supposedly eight (well technically sixteen due to the all-to-familiar Nintendo strategy of increasing replay value by adding a second quest rehash of the same levels just with ramped up difficulty) of these megalithic space battle stations that you have to destroy. They are in space, not in the air. All I think of when I hear Air Fortress is either:
A) The B-17 Flying Fortresses that served admirably during the 2nd World War
or
B) Mega Maid from Space Balls stealing the air from Princess Vespa’s home planet.
Poor word choice aside, I started the game to quickly find the control scheme very easy. Air Fortress really didn’t bring a whole lot of innovation to the table. Although, in North America, it was the first instance of a dual gameplay type of game, with a side scrolling shooter portion, followed by a, well, different sort of shooter section, which is reminiscent of Blaster Master (which came out before Air Fortress in Japan, but after in N.A.). In the first shooter section Hal needs to fight his way to the Air Fortress’ entrance on his equally poorly named space scooter, the Light Ship. Once inside the Fortress, Hal is on his own and is subject to a low gravity physics engine, which reminds me a bit of Solar Jetman, just much easier to control.
Oh, and one more thing, Hal and his Light Ship may have ridiculous names, but they look even more insane. Hal is supposed to be the lone commando sent against this epically evil empire, yet he is outfitted in a bright banana-yellow suit with a gigantic helmet. There might as well be a crayon named after him. Next time you break out a coloring book and the standard yellow isn’t quite bright enough, look no further than Hal Bailman Yellow.
When I initially began playing, I thought Air Fortress was going to be a push-over. The first three levels were pie. Fortresses four and five were a bit more difficult, with the mazes increasing in difficulty, but still didn’t put up much of a fight. I then learned the hard truth.
This game is freaking hard.
The sixth Air Fortress ramps the difficulty up exponentially. With a much more difficult maze to work through, limited energy, much more difficult enemies, and cheap design making damage avoidance impossible, level six was the bane of my existence for three to four days. I hadn’t drawn a map for a game in years. I now have pages of maps for all the Fortresses starting with six.
See, the real problem is, that you might make it to the energy core (boss), and they really aren’t hard to destroy, but once beaten, the core activates a destruct sequence and you need to reach the escape point. The path to the escape point is equally labyrinthine and full of difficult enemies. The trick is to map out both the path to the core and the escape route and clear both of enemies, before destroying the core. Even having done this, you can be sure that the game designers provided you with barely enough time to cover the distance between the core and the escape point. I died several times due to the station self destructing when I was mere pixels away from reaching my escape ship. Each time, it made me want to punch a baby.
All this ranting may make it seem like I despise Air Fortress, and I do. But, in actuality it was a challenging game that had me addicted. I never want to play it again, for fear of placing me in a homicidal rage, but I haven’t felt such a sense of accomplishment in beating a game for quite some time.
Hal Bailman: worst choice ever as a new character in the next Smash Bros game.
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