The Game Gear version of EA‘s classic helicopter action game, Desert Strike: Return To The Gulf, is excellent. It reproduces the tense gameplay of the original very well, and manages to pack-in quite a lot to do, over the span of four missions.

Each mission has numerous objectives that have to be tackled in priority order. While flying, pressing Start brings up the map, and pushing left and right on the d-pad cycles through all targets of interest. Pushing Start again then shows your fuel, armour and ammo count. Pushing Start a third time returns you to the game.

The graphics are very good, with smooth-scrolling backgrounds and recognisable sprites. The controls are ‘tank controls’, meaning that you rotate with left and right, and move forward by pushing up on the d-pad. They work well enough.

Desert Strike for the Game Gear was developed by Tiertex and first published by Domark in 1992, and it’s still worth playing today.

More: Desert Strike on Wikipedia