Aviator Arcade II – New C64 Game Review.

Isn’t it always the case? You’ve made a nice hot cup of tea, grabbed the Sunday morning paper and you are all ready to settle down on the kitchen table and catch up on all the latest Football action from the day before when the telephone rings. You answer the phone…its the Government. Apparently some riff-raff terrorist group has been somewhat inconsiderate and decided to occupation the City of Surburbia and they are making somewhat of a nuisance of themselves and have asked if you could help them out and neutralise the threat. You look out the window into your backyard, admiring your newly acquired start of the art Attack Helicopter and a big grin appears across your face. ‘It’s time for some fun’, you think to yourself. It’s time for Aviator Arcade 2!

Developed by Mark Hindsbo with assistance from Saul Cross on the graphical side and Thomas E Petersen providing the music and sound effects, Aviator Arcade 2 is the latest vertical shoot-em up to be released for the Commodore 64 looking to provide players with a console quality arcade experience on a classic 8-Bit home computer.

Aviator Arcade 2 provides a good quality gaming experience that sees you start of with a basic shooting weapon and some bombs. As you progress through each level you will come across various weapon upgrades such as dual missiles, homing missiles, with later levels featuring laser upgrades.

Game graphics are both bright and very clear. Moving your chopper around feels seamless and game scrolling is quite smooth. This is certainly no SEUCK game. What stands out for me the most with Aviator Arcade 2 is the variation to the background terrain and the enemies you encounter. The music and sound effects does not let the game down and everything blends together very well to provide a highly produced offering.

To complete your mission you have three lives at your disposal with a life being lost when you lose all your health bars. Health upgrades are available to collect, which fully restores your health bars and an extra life awarded for every 100,000 points you accumulate.

When you lose all of your energy you have to restart the game from the start of the level. The absence of mid-level checkpoints was initially a bit of an irritant to me as when I lost a life during an end of level boss battle, I had fight my way way back up again before I could have another crack at conquering the boss. Fortunately, due to the quality of game play on offer, I persisted and as I got better at the game, the missing checkpoint facility became less of an issue.

As you progress through Aviator Arcade 2, the game introduces a twist in its story plot as the appearance of an Alien like boss at the end of the third level reveals that antagonists may not be from this world and that a far grander plot being hatched against human civilization, taking your mission to the South Pole and then eventually out into outer space.

The shooting game play on offer is quite good without it being spectacular but the constant reveal of new enemy types and background ensures that the player is constantly engage on the blasting action.

While Aviator Arcade only features 10 levels, the gradual increase in difficulty (along with no mid-level checkpoints) and the hectic nature of some of the end of level battles should ensure that even the best gamers out there will need to spend some time before they complete the game. End to end, you will find that there is over 30 minutes of blasting action on offer.

Aviator Arcade II does not necessarily bring anything new to the shoot-em up genre but it does provide an overall high quality gaming experience to any fan of 8-Bit vertical shooters and is quite enjoyable to play.

To see more of Aviator Arcade II, check out the video version of this review below.

Aviator Arcade II is set to be released very soon in cartridge format by RGCD, with Psytronik Software handling the diskette edition.