| Thunderhawk | |
|---|---|
Cover art |
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| Developer(s) | Core Design |
| Publisher(s) | Core Design |
| Platform(s) | Amiga, Atari ST, IBM PC, Mega-CD |
| Release date(s) | 1991 Mega-CD
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| Genre(s) | Action |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Media/distribution | Floppy disk (Physical) CD-ROM (Physical) |
Thunderhawk (AH-3 ThunderStrike) is a helicopter combat simulator game released by Core Design for the Amiga, Atari ST and IBM PC (DOS) in 1991, and for the Sega Mega-CD (Sega CD in North America) in 1993. The game was renamed to AH-3 ThunderStrike for its USA release.
In the game the player is part of the "MERLIN" helicopter combat assault team, flying an AH-73M helicopter. The game has been described as a first person version of the Strike series of games.
Thunderhawk was followed by its sequel Thunderhawk 2.
The game consists of several campaigns for each one of ten world areas, the campaigns are themed around real events or activities in these areas (e.g UN convoy relates to the Bosnian war, South China seas relates to piracy etc.)
The World areas and their campaign themes were...
A typical campaign consists of 4 or 5 missions. Each mission has a primary objective that must be completed to successfully complete the mission, there are other targets in each missions such as tanks and SAM sites but these are only used to help the player boost their score. The primary target is usually a major structure like an enemy base or a bridge.
Usually the player is equipped with a standard set of weapons - 16 Missiles, 76 Rockets and a machine gun with unlimited ammunition. On some special missions the rockets are replaced by a weapon that is critical to the success of that particular mission, such as a runway cratering system when the primary objective is to destroy an airbase or a bomb when destruction of a bridge is the primary objective.
The control system for Thunderhawk was fairly unique for the platforms supporting a mouse. It used the mouse for basic control, plus some keyboard input for rarely used commands. Moving the mouse would tilt the helicopter in the specified direction, and make it start moving in that direction. Pressing the left mouse button fires weapons. When the right mouse button was held, moving the mouse up and down changed altitude, while side to side yawed the helicopter side to side.