Please login to submit a screenshot

After months of adverts, Tomahawk, DI's follow up to their ground-breaking Fighter Pilot, finally reached the shops for Christmas 1985, complete with the appalling Lenslok security system to prevent piracy. Uck! The game was sublime though. It puts you in control of an attack helicopter on a series of deadly missons over enemy territory. The graphics are vector style and work very well. As you'd expect from DI, the handling is extremely realistic, and there is a grin-inducing variety of weapons to play with. You'll have great fun popping up over a mountain ridge to despatch a tank with a Hellfire missile.

THE AH-64A Apache Advanced Attack Helicopter. Think about it for a moment. It flies at nearly 200 knots maximum. It can climb 1400 feet in a minute. It carries 16 hellfire anti-tank missiles, 1200 130mm cannon rounds, and four pods of 70mm rockets. If that isn't enough to freeze the blood, or rather vaporise it, the pilot's helmet responds to what the pilot is looking at and points the guns at it.

It sounds like an extremely unlikely nightmare, but it's real, and Digital Integration has finally brought out its long talked-about simulation. Tomahawk is the follow-up to Fighter Pilot, which we still rate as the best flight simulation around for the Spectrum. But Tomahawk takes the genre to new levels of sophistication with a variety of options and levels of violence which will surely delight simulation lovers and militaristic Rambo-freaks alike.


The chopper is easy enough to fly in training mode, but the landscape you see is very detailed, and since helicopter gunships are all about getting down low and hugging the surface, you'll rapidly discover the delights of cruising eight feet off the ground at 100 knots. Trees and buildings are the least of your worries - there are mountains and pylons which present even more hazardous obstacles.

Then there's the enemy. Dotted around the playing area are tanks, field guns, and an enemy helicopter. Once you get into the proper play mode - even as a trainee - life gets hairy as those blaze away at you whenever they can. They also produce rather impressive explosions if you knock them out.

The control panel is fairly cluttered, but you won't need to look at all the instruments all the time. The controls are responsive, and there's a twin joystick option if you want to put all the controls onto sticks.

Manoeuvres are quite different from flying aircraft. Helicopters tend not to like looping the loop, but the instruction booklet details hair-raising stunts such as torque turn and autorotation, where you reduce the revs and drive the rotors with air passing upwards through them. You can even land a helicopter with the engine completely cut out.

Options include four levels of difficulty, day or night flying, crosswind and turbulence effects, and cloud. The last is great fun. You can select a cloud base from 50ft to 1000ft. At 50ft nearly every object on the terrain can only be seen when you're low enough to hit it. On the other hand, it's tremendous fun dropping like a stone out of the sky in front of the enemy to zap him.

The wireframe graphics are effective and appear well-regulated. Targets appear as dots on the horizon at first, and since there are plenty of bushes and trees about which look identical at long range there's a realistic feel to the business of hunting them out. You'll rely on the cockpit instruments to close in, but once you have visual contact the best tactic is to fly by instinct and keep a sharp eye on the altimeter.

Digital Integration has produced a superb simulation, with plenty of action for games lovers; simulation addicts can forget about the warfare and just slink off to a quiet corner of the map and practise aerobatics and low-level flying. It's the ideal mix, and we recommend it without reservation.


Publisher Digital Integration Price £9.95
Memory 48K Joystick Sinclair, Kempston, Cursor
*****

Chris Bourne

Following the success of Digital Integration's Fighter Pilot based on the Tomcat, Dave Marshall sat down and studied the specifications for the Hughes Apache Advanced Attack Helicopter. Now, after a long wait, the fruits of his labours are finally available with the release of Tomahawk, the helicopter flight simulator which puts you in control of one mean machine. Once you've got past the Lenslok the main menu is displayed, which allows you to choose from a range of flight options and weather conditions:
Flying Training - this helps you become familiar with the helicopter instruments and develop ground attack skills;
Combat - which puts you in a battlefield scenario with live hostile targets;
Day or Night - at night there is no artificial horizon and your view is limited to the pilot's night vision system;
Clear or Cloudy - you can choose an overcast sky for instrument flying;
Cloudbase - selectable cloudbase, you chose the height at which you wish the clouds to appear if any are desired;
Crosswinds and Turbulence - for the experienced pilot. Allows for variable crosswinds and turbulence effects;
Sound - if set to ON then it mainly consists of effects generated by the rotor blades;
Pilot Rating - effectively the skill level option. There are four choices ranging, from the Trainee to Ace;
Controls - joystick or keys option. Allows for two ports to be used on Interface 2 for enhanced helicopter control.

You view the game from the cockpit. The top half of the screen is dedicated to the horizon and any features that might appear on the landscape (or the map, in map mode). The lower section of the screen takes the form of an instrument panel which displays the status of all the flight controls. These consist of bar scales for throttle position, fuel, engine torque, turbine and rotor RPM, engine temperature and collective position indicator. There are also readouts on altitude, time to target, ground position, speed in knots and vertical speed. Also featured on the instrument panel is the artificial horizon. This gives information on roll and pitch, while to the right of this is the Doppler Navigation/radar; using this it is possible to find your way to other landing pads as well as track enemy targets.

At your disposal are three types of weapons: Guns which have a range of about 2000 ft; Rockets - the Apache is equipped with 38 of these (19 each side) and they have a range of 4000 ft; Missiles are laser guided and automatically lock on to the target. You only have 8 of these. Each type of weapon is controlled by a different type of sight.

When in combat mode there are a number of possible targets such as tanks, field guns and enemy helicopters all of which are depicted in 3D vector graphics. Fighting is not easy and it is advisable to train for quite a while before going into combat mode. As well as using the tracking system, the map is in constant use in combat, so it is necessary to learn how to fly 'blind', without the graphic representation of the horizon.

The number of variables that can be set on the main, option screen allows you to almost redefine the game. If you get bored playing one way, for instance, you can make the game a lot tougher by selecting a cloudy option and adding in crosswinds and turbulence.

Producer: Digital Integration
Price: £9.95
Language: machine code
Author: Dave Marshall



CRITICISM
'When Fighter Pilot was first released I had just bought my Spectrum and remember thinking what an ace simulation it was. Now, almost 2 years later, the sequel has been released and it is every bit as good as the original. My first impressions were that it looked just like Fighter Pilot but after playing it for a while, you realise that it has been improved a lot. The graphics are very good with nice representations of enemy tanks and helicopters. The only real problem that I had with the game was that it was a bit tough to get right into - but if it wasn't so tough then it wouldn't be so realistic. I would definitely recommend this game to anybody who is keen on simulations. Arcade addicts would find it a touch boring, perhaps.'

'This has to be one of the most awaited proggies ever: the development time was even longer than The Great Space Race. Well the end product is certainly better than Legend's little problem and all in all a very competent flight simulator indeed. The best thing about Tomahawk is that it's instantly accessible. I found it very easy to power up and fly around with practically no skill involved at all. As you get into the game and start using the combat options, things get more complex and a fair bit of practice will be required. The graphics move fairly well considering the complexity of some of the shapes that are handled. At one point, though, I'm sure I managed to fly through a mountain.. Overall a very good simulation indeed, even if it is a mite late. Non-flight freaks should see before buying, but flight maniacs will love it.'

'This is the sort of game I couldn't honestly recommend to someone who likes sitting down to a game which can be competently played instantly. As with most flight simulators, practice makes perfect. The 3D works pretty well once you get into the air and the update on the horizon is about the quickest you'll get on the Spectrum, considering everything else the program is doing. The multitude of missions and combat sequences must make Tomahawk potentially the most durable program yet to be released on the Spectrum. The instructions are excellent and show you in detail how you can fly the Apache. Perhaps Digital Integration should have made more of them - a bigger box with glossier bumph would have added even more finesse to an already brilliant program. If you liked Fighter Pilot then this is the natural progression; if you've never seen it, give this one a go - it could well get you hooked!'



COMMENTS
Control keys: Q decrease collective, A increase collective, Z/Caps Shift rudder left/right, C combat mode, N next objective, P select weapon, 7/6 nose down/up, 8/5 roll right/left, 0 fire button, W/S open/close throttle
Joystick: Interface 2, Kempston, Cursor
Keyboard play: lots of keys but quite a good response
Use of colour: not a lot of colour but generally well used
Graphics: nice vector graphics
Sound: limited but put to good use
Skill levels: 4
Screens: massive playing area
General rating: a very good, very realistic simulation but it may not appeal to arcade players.


Use of computer 93%
Graphics 93%
Playability 89%
Getting started 86%
Addictive qualities 95%
Value for money 92%
Overall 93%