Friday, June 10, 2011

Today I Learned: There were a lot of Top Gun games since the NES Top Gun

I was looking through the 2011 E3 trailers and noticed Top Gun: Hard Lock and thought, "really, they're bringing Top Gun back."  My last experience with Top Gun was with the two NES titles, Top Gun and Top Gun: The Second Mission.  And, from my memory of those games, my thinking was that dog should be left dead.  Both of those games sucked and that franchise is as dead as Val Kilmer's career.

I checked out the trailer, which told me nothing.  When will game companies understand that we would like to see actual gameplay in the trailers?  Cut scenes tell us nothing and with the capabilities of the 360, PSIII, and PC - you can make pretty much any game look phenomenal if all we see is a cut scene from it.  The trailer is below.

I was going to make my daily post just be a quick, "hey the trailer is out, they don't show us anything but it is Top Gun," and that would have been it.  But, since I believe in being thorough (and I was bored), I decided to do a little digging and found out there were more than just the two, impossible to land or refuel, NES games.

GameBoy had one called Top Gun: Guts and Glory and GameBoy Advance had Top Gun: Combat Zone, Top Gun: Firestorm, and Top Gun: Firestorm Advance.  PlayStation and PC had Top Gun: Fire at Will.  GameCube, PC, and PSII had Top Gun: Combat Zones.  PC also had one just called Top Gun.  Plus there are a slew of mobile versions.  And, to add insult to injury, I am sure I missed some.

What demographic is still hungry for Top Gun games?  Maybe it is just me, and I was around for the Top Gun hoopla of the mid-80's, but are gaming execs that lazy that they can't come up with a better brand.  I can't dog the games themselves, as I mentioned I only played the two NES games (which to reiterate - really, really sucked) so they could be solid simulation games but don't just slap the Top Gun name to relive a dead franchise.  What's next the Cocktail video game?  Tom Cruise was in that movie too.  It could be perfect for Kinect and the Wiimote - go around mixing drinks while listening to the very brief resurrection of the Beach Boys career.  I think it would be perfect.

So, to pose the question - has anyone ever played any of these?  I may break them out later today on an emulator just to see how they play.  If I do, i will update my findings.  I wouldn't hold your breath though.  For me, I like to think of Top Gun as a really bad series of NES games and a average at best, homoerotic, movie from the 80's.

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