Why Desert Strike is the closest I'll get to being an Apache pilot

Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf (1992)

Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf (1992)

God, I wish you could have been there with me to see it. There my ass was, up on the 94th floor of the Hancock building in Chicago, looking down at the sprawling city below, a bit like Ferris Bueller and his pals when they had their day off.

All of a sudden, a news helicopter pulled into view, exactly level with us on the viewing platform, and it began to hover in front of us. Then, something very curious but also very predictable happened: all of the boys congregated to look out at the chopper. Every single one of us, regardless of age. And all of the girls just looked at us, bemused.

Even now, I find it difficult to explain to my fiancée just how much of a buzz it was when that cavalier helicopter pilot began waving at us. As you can imagine, he looked every bit as cool, with his aviators and bomber jacket, as Tom Cruise did in Top Gun. Fighter jets? Forget 'em - I'm all about helicopters these days.

Nor can my fiancée understand the general obsession that boys have with helicopters. It’s no use me explaining it, either. The other day, she was read the news and expressing sorrow about being American. I quickly had to remind her that she came from the country that gave us the Apache helicopter, for God's sake.

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If my country invented the Apache, I'd sing the national anthem 10 times a day. I'd get into fights with every other nationality, and no matter what they said back to me, I'd just counter with "yeah, but the Apache helicopter!" and then fold my arms, knowing that I'd won the argument. They'd know it and I'd know it.

In truth though, there are two different faces to helicopters. Whenever you hear about helicopters these days, it’s usually in the context of some well-known figure dying in a calamitous helicopter crash. God rest them, but in some ways, you can’t be surprised. I'm no aviation engineer, but even if I was, I doubt I could ever explain how helicopters fly.

I'm not silly enough to suggest there’s magic keeping them in the sky, but it can't be far off that. Nothing about those rotors should work. Indeed, far too often, the rotors really don't work, and that's the end of that. I've never found myself on a helicopter, which leaves me with very few helicopter insights to share with you here.

That’s unlikely to change either, because firstly I haven't got anywhere near that kind of money - have you seen how much it costs to get a helipad fitted to your property these days? Secondly, and most importantly, I don't have the testicular fortitude to get in a chopper. Even if a plane should go down, you might actually survive it. Go down in a helicopter and I’m afraid you shall be lucky if you don't get decapitated in addition to being exploded.

But the other side of the helicopter coin is their prowess in combat. I'm not sure the hundred-million-dollar helicopters still see much action in live combat anymore - they tend to leave the airborne stuff to drones these days, so kills can be scored from even farther away.

But in the days of the Gulf War, conventional warfare at its finest, there was simply no beating the likes of attack helicopters. As Patrick Stewart told us, in Ted of all movies, Apache helicopters are unbelievably impressive complements of weaponry - absolute death-machines.

If you're not too squeamish, take a look at some of the old Apache footage on YouTube to see how these brutes take out military targets from miles away, either with 30mm chain guns, Hydra rockets or devastating Hellfire missiles that rip through armour like a knife through butter. That's not to say that Apache pilots are heroes at a thousand paces; when you need a unit to nip in quickly, deliver a blazing rush of firepower over the target, and disappear just as quickly, then the Apache is your only man.

That's why it made all the sense in the world to make a video game based on using Apache helicopters. In a world of playable plumbers and hedgehogs, attack choppers were an unexplored niche. And I must admire the bravery and panache of the developers for creating and developing a game quite literally called Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf, merely one year after the height of the Gulf War.

Take any global conflict happening today - and no matter when you read this piece, there will be a global conflict happening - and imagine trying to release a game very much based on that conflict, with a little bit of goofiness thrown in. It wouldn't even get past the first round of committee approvals, would it?

Desert Strike is a helicopter simulation game that puts you in control of an Apache helicopter with a true-to-life, accurate weapon loadout - 1138 machine gun rounds, 38 Hydra rockets and 8 Hellfire missiles, more than enough to shred anything that moves. You can tell that the designer, Mike Posehn, used to be a mechanical engineer - the attention to detail on your Apache's sprite and all the other ordnance you'll be taking on is quite impressive. Realism was the name of the game here.

Not only will you play the role of the pilot, but you'll also essentially be the co-pilot, firing those weapons at enemy infantry, tanks and AA guns, as well as using your winch or rope ladder to rescue civilians and pick up ammo crates and fuel drums.

You do get to choose your co-pilot at the start of the game, each of them having slight differences to their firing speed and winch control. Although the game never really explains the differences between them, and in any case, once you find one of the MIA copilots, you don't even need to concern yourself with the choice anymore because you'll automatically have the best one onboard with you.

As it turns out, being an ace helicopter pilot means you’ve got to be pretty damn good at decision making. And even before you get to choose your copilot, you'll need to choose what version of Desert Strike to play - most commonly, this choice will go between the Super Nintendo and the Sega Mega Drive, though Amiga and GBA versions were released as well.

The game was developed natively for the Sega though, and generally has better sound effects, not to mention you won't find a bit of censorship here - even in the game's opening sequence where The Madman (definitely not a pastiche of Saddam Hussein and Muamar Gaddafi) lowers some poor fool into a barrel of boiling water. This shows you that Desert Strike is a game with some chest hair, which was notable indeed for 1992.

It's fondly remembered by just about everyone who played it, but if you stop to really examine Desert Strike, you begin to realise that it's really quite an unfun experience. In the first instance, there are only 4 main Campaigns or Missions to get through, and all of them have essentially the same brown desert environment. That’s to be expected I suppose, but it doesn’t give you too much incentive to keep playing.

Realistically however, the sameyness doesn't even matter - not many people made it past the first level of Desert Strike, and for a long time I was one of them. Instead we preferred to just go around, blowing stuff up, before getting shot down ourselves. And that will happen unbelievably quickly - your helicopter is made of paper.

Again, that's not too dissimilar to real-life; death-machines they may be, but copters can't take much enemy fire. Buzzing in and buzzing out is what it’s all about, and Desert Strike expects this from you as well. But this would require slowly hovering around the mission area, planning out your strategy, and then going for it. And it’s impossible to take this time when your helicopter's fuel levels are constantly ticking down.

Believe me, in this game, the Apache is all out of juice in about 2 minutes, and you'll start getting a terrible buzzing sound reminding you to get some juice every 2 seconds, when it's already too late. Make no mistake, this game is mega tough, mega unforgiving, and a little bit tedious if the truth be told.

It was a fabulous idea though, spawning a quintet of Strike games, and I personally have no issue with Desert Strike being considered a classic retro game. If nothing else, it gives me even more respect for those lucky souls out there who get to pilot helicopters every day; even for the news reporters, jinking choppers ain't an easy job.

4 April 2025