Gunship

About Gunship

Gunship (1986) is MicroProse's AH-64 Apache helicopter simulator, flying primary and secondary missions across five theatres and earning medals and promotions for a persistent pilot.

Gunship in Depth

Missions span five regions: a US training ground, Southeast Asia with the 1st Air Cavalry, Central America with the 82nd Airborne, the Middle East with the 101st Airborne and Western Europe with the 3rd Armored Division. After choosing region, style and enemies, the pilot receives a primary and secondary mission, such as destroying an enemy headquarters or supporting friendly troops, the latter easier because the fighting is closer to friendly lines. The Apache is usually armed with Hellfire missiles for hard targets such as bunkers and tanks, unguided FFAR rockets for soft targets, and high-explosive rounds for its 30 mm cannon, with Sidewinders as backup in some theatres.

Patient pilots can hop between hills to hide and pop up to attack, while aggressive ones fly fast, low and erratically for close cannon runs, risky against first-line enemies. Armour deflects most small-calibre fire, but damage can disable systems and eventually cause a power failure, forcing an autorotation landing; a badly injured pilot down in enemy territory goes missing in action. There is no time limit, and Forward Area Resupply Points rearm, refuel and repair, though the ideal is to finish both missions and return within 20 minutes. The game never ends: promotions stop at Colonel, but medals up to the Medal of Honor keep coming, even posthumously, until retirement as a Brigadier General.

Making Gunship

MicroProse developed and published it in 1986 for MS-DOS, Atari ST, Amiga, Commodore 64, FM Towns, MSX, PC-98, X68000 and ZX Spectrum. It was MicroProse's third best-selling Commodore game by late 1987. Info gave the C64 version five stars, calling it "without qualification, the best combat flight simulator ever released for an 8-bit computer!", and Computer Gaming World said a five-star rating was "well-deserved", later recalling that "when initially released, this was THE helicopter simulation". Its success led to Gunship 2000 and Gunship!.