Cobra Force

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Cobra Force is a shoot 'em up and surely a nice addition to the sci-fi shooters of the 8bit home computers back in the late 80s, offering addictive but rather difficult gameplay due to its "stiff" controls. In this futuristic and hostile world, the mission is pretty simple! You have to pilot your sophisticated combat helicopter (the AH-1W Super Cobra, the most sophisticated fighting machine in the air back in the days) destroy every enemy on sight, collect all pods and, finally, confront two gigantic helicopters that must be destroyed in order to progress to the next level! Cobra Force takes you into a danger zone split in four exciting missions, each with a gradually increasing difficulty level. Your Cobra is armed with a standard M197 20mm rapid fire machine gun and a limited supply of Hellfire anti-armor missiles, as well as a number of prototype weapons systems. You may also collect missiles and extra firepower by shooting certain alien enemies.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The visuals are really nice on the CPC version, with bright colors and smooth sprite animation although the backgrounds are flickering and the frame rate occassionally drops when too many sprites occupy the screen (the ZX and Commodore versions have smoother background scrolling here!). The sound is great, offering a nice introductory tune (that's missing on the ZX) and a few strong sound effects during gameplay (including gun-fire, explosions etc).