F-117A Stealth Fighter (NES edition) Reviews

MicroProse <3 NightDive

This is not the original F-117A game...horrible.

I'll give this a mild thumbs up. Just know what you're getting and don't be like the goof on here bemoaning that this isn't the original 'F-117A Stealth Fighter'. Gee, what exactly was the clue that cracked the case for you there, Columbo - the fact that the preview images look nothing like the original or the fact that it advertises 'NES EDITION' in the title? But I digress, what you're getting here is a legal means of playing a ROM with a nice little menu overlay and some border art. That's about it. As for the game itself, no, it's clearly not the original but rather a somewhat rough around the edges Nintendo port that nonetheless will have a certain charm and appeal to gamers of a particular age group. It's one of the most rudimentary flight sims you can imagine, but it's doing some pretty cool things with the limited hardware of the NES and you should be able to appreciate that if you grew up with these consoles. I can't imagine 20-somethings and below ever wanting to play this, but who knows, there's bound to be one or two youngsters with taste out there somewhere... right? Protip: for a fun easter egg, try the password in the back of the original instruction manual.

First things first... THIS IS NOT THE ORIGINAL PC GAME, "F-117a Nighthawk Stealth Fighter 2.0." That game, also, can be found here on Steam, but that's a different game. This is the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) cartridge game. Related in title and in general theme, but entirely different in every other meaningful way. The other reviewer, above, who gave it a TERRIBLE review simply didn't bother reading the description of what he was buying prior to buying, it seems. What you're getting here is a Nintendo NES emulator, running the old cartridge ROM for the console game. If that's not what you want, look elsewhere. I never really got into the NES when I was younger, but my uncle had one, and used to play it with his own son back when this was "state of the art." He died last year, and the "Nintendo Classic Edition" mini-game console he'd picked up ended up coming to me. It's basically a Linux micro-PC running emulation software, and while it had only a few game ROMs installed initially, the internal storage is literally large enough to hold every single game ever produced for the NES... which is how most users use it. So, I got the NES version of this, up-front. Now, the game does not fly with a joystick. It uses a very simple game controller... two fire buttons, a 4-way direction-pad, and a start button. The exact buttons configured in this emulator, not surprisingly. Go look up "Nintendo Entertainment System Controller," if you're unfamiliar with this. And yes, the entire game had to be stored in a single (tiny, by current standards) game cartridge, and ran on relatively primitive hardware. It's NOT a "study sim." It's an ARCADE GAME. Think of it more as a companion piece to the PC game of the time (which, while ALSO crude by current standards, remains one of the most loved PC flight sim games of all time, and is still a blast to fly!) I've been "simming" since Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer... even, technically, since Silicon Graphics provided a vector-based sim on their CAD workstations, though I barely touched that one. Computer technology has come a LONG way, though the pinnacle of flight simming really happened around 2000-2004. This game, by contrast, isn't a sim. It's a "casual arcade game." That said, given the limitations of trying to get ANYTHING into the tiny footprint of an NES cartridge, it did surprisingly well. Go into this with the understanding of what you're getting... rather than "what you think it OUGHT to be"... and you'll be perfectly happy. Otherwise... don't bother getting it, I guess.