What is Apache Strike?

The year is 1997, A Stealth bomber has transported your Apache AH-64 helicopter deep behind the borders of the Soviet Union. Your mission: Destroy that nation's Strategic Defense Computers. To do so, you must dash through canyons of buildings, locate an SDC suspended somewhere in the labyrinth of streets, and annihilate it with one of your missiles.

That’s the premise behind Apache Strike, but in truth this is an arcade game. Its object is to score points. If you fancy action games, Apache Strike can be entertaining, even in this age of glasnost. It's somewhat like the attack on the Death Star in the original Star Wars film. If you remember, rebel pilots crashed into the walls a lot. You will too.

The Strategic Defense Computers, of course, are the most valuable targets. But also important are the defending helicopters and tanks. Getting them adds to your total and, because they shoot back, lets you attack an SDC with some comfort. Destroying it advances you to the next city/level.

You begin a game at the the 1st, 20th, or 40th level. As you ascend levels, the degree of difficulty (more defenders, greater distance to target) increases. There is no end. Use up the allotment of three Apaches on any level and the game is over.

At the left of your screen is an animated view of your helicopter as seen from above and behind. On the right is a control panel, including a radar and an indicator showing the distance and direction to the SDC.

Apache Strike works on 512K Macs but needs more memory for some features. On 1-megabyte Macs, the status reports are given verbally by LINDA, the Apache’s on-board computer. By the way, the speech generator sounds great.

Apache Strike monopolizes all of the Mac’s internal memory. It won’t work with MultiFinder or any software that takes over a portion of RAM. This includes some hard-disk drivers, so check your system configuration as well.

Apache Strike is playable, but control is vague, especially at the start. A bit of practice helps you get the hang of flying. Still, I never became accustomed to maneuvering with the mouse. A joystick is a definite improvement. I used the Nuvo Labs Arcade Adapter to connect one and it worked fine. Don’t be misled — there is room on your working disk for the Adapters INIT file.
Although the animation is smooth and most of the images are solid, the graphics could be better. Buildings are simply represented by lines, making maneuvering needlessly difficult. The effect is like trying to fly through a hall of mirrors, and it’s easy to lose track of where you are. Some shading of building surfaces would help.

Other suggested improvements would be different city layouts (all are the same) and a more realistic chopper. This Apache can only fly forward and at one speed. What’s the point of a helicopter if you can’t hover or turn in place?

Martinez, Carlos Domingo. (July 1988). Apache Strike. MacUser. (pgs. 115, 117).

Download Apache Strike for Mac

Architecture

Motorola 68K

Compatibility notes

• Macintosh 512K or later

Note: Macintosh II friendly; MultiFinder hostile

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Mini vMac