Operation Wolf

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Operation Wolf
Studio Taito
Publisher Taito
Senior Developer Katuhiko Hirano, Satoru Komiya, Masaru Tamura (design) u. a.
Erstveröffent-
lichung
1987
genre Shoot 'em up (Lightgun)
Game mode 1 player
control Lightgun ; 2 buttons
casing default
Arcade system Main CPU : Motorola 68000 (@ 12 MHz)
Sound CPU: Z80 (@ 4 MHz)
Sound Chips: Yamaha YM2151; 2 × MSM 5205
monitor Raster resolution 320 × 240, color palette: 8192
information indexed in Germany

Operation Wolf is a shoot-'em-up - arcade game , which in 1987 by the Japanese company Taito developed and marketed. The game principle is a lightgun game .

Game description

The goal of the game is to complete six missions and free five hostages in the final two levels .

The game is controlled with a replica of an Uzi submachine gun attached to the machine. In addition, a kind of force feedback is used to simulate the recoil of a weapon.

In the levels scrolling sideways , the player must try to shoot down a large number of enemies, consisting of soldiers, armored personnel carriers and helicopters, with the help of the game controls and thus end the missions. These opponents defend themselves in two different forms: one part only begins to shoot after a certain time after appearing, which takes away life points from the player until he can eliminate these opponents, the second form consists of opponents that are recognizable and slow Use flying projectiles or knives. The player can try to hit these projectiles in flight. In addition to submachine gun fire, the player can use grenades.

The ammunition available to the player is limited. From time to time magazines and missiles appear that the player can collect. It can also be refilled by destroying some boxes or killing pigs, chickens and vultures that appear in the game.

From the second mission onwards, characters appear that the player should not hit, otherwise he will lose life energy. These consist of nurses with a stretcher, an elderly woman and a boy who run across the field in panic, and a young woman who is only wearing a bikini .

Plot and missions

The plot of the game is only told through still images between the individual missions:

  • 1. Mission: The actor destroys the radio system of the enemy, so that possible supplies are prevented.
  • 2. Mission: In the jungle, trying to get the protagonist information, where to concentration camps ( "concentration camp") is to be held captive in the five hostages.
  • 3. Mission: The actor is looking for a village where he can rest.
  • 4th Mission: Now an ammunition depot ("powder magazine") is attacked by the enemy.
  • 5. Mission: The hostages from the concentration camp are freed.
  • 6. Mission: The protagonist gives fire protection to the hostages fleeing into an airplane.

The last two missions also have an impact on the gameplay. In missions five and six, figures actually appear who are supposed to represent hostages and who should be protected by the player.

Problems

Due to the mechanical stress on the control device on the one hand by the free movement that took place against several springs that held the "weapon" upright when not in use, on the other hand due to impact effects that should make firing the weapon more realistic, it sometimes came to malfunctions. The circuit board for the light sensor also failed more often.

With the introduction of the Jamma standard, in which the connector assignment was finally brought to a uniform level, the marketing of such individual machines had become increasingly difficult. From then on, the manufacturers made an effort to ensure that the games developed could be played with the standard buttons and the joystick.

successor

Due to the success of the game, Taito developed the successors Operation Thunderbolt (1988), Operation Wolf 3 (1994) and Operation Tiger (1998).

Ports

In 1988 there were conversions for C64 , Amiga , MS-DOS , Amstrad CPC , Atari ST , Nintendo Entertainment System , MSX , Sega Master System , Sinclair ZX Spectrum and PC Engine .

In the Taito Legends game collection , Operation Wolf was released in 2005 for Xbox , PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Windows . Except for one Amstrad CPC version, no light gun was supported.

Since the game has been indexed in Germany since April 29, 1989 , it did not appear in the game collections here. Since March 14, 2008 it has been available as a download for Nintendo's Wii via the Virtual Console , for which it received USK -12 approval.

Web links