Blue Lightning - Anyone actually beat it?!

[kevincal]

So I tried to play this game again last night. I will admit it is pretty fun for the most part. But the same thing always happens to me. I find it impossible to avoid flying into buildings in certain parts of the game. It is so annoying. I have played this game atleast 20 times and never get very far in the game without losing all of my planes and getting game over...

 

So has anyone here actually beaten this game? If only the programmers didn't put so many stupid buildings in the game, the game would be much better in my opinion.

[Zerosquare]

I find it impossible to avoid flying into buildings in certain parts of the game.

"Where did you learn... to fly ?"

 

Oops, sorry. Wrong game.

[kevincal]

_{hah ya Only I am a great pilot, it's the game that is the problem. I guess that is why everyone thinks blue lightning is not very good at all! Even if you are a great gamer the game is broken it seems. Just curious if anyone here has actually beaten the game. Seems extremely difficult. I can barely beat one of the 7 world destinations let alone all 7.}

[jerseystyle]

I beat it back in the day- at the end you have to kill this dude who sounds like kevin bacon, so you follow behind until you can shoot him down. The ending was pretty crappy, as I recall.

[kevincal]

How do you manage to not hit buildings?! I cant seem to figure it out. I guess it just takes a lot of practice.

[Isgoed]

kevincal, look at the buildings as if they are flat sprites(I suppose they are?) so when you pass a building, you can immediately turn to a side "behind" the building, even though you can't see what's behind it.

 

Also, it helps to use the air brake.

[+remowilliams]

I beat it. With a hammer, after I loaded it for the first time.

[kevincal]

kevincal, look at the buildings as if they are flat sprites(I suppose they are?) so when you pass a building, you can immediately turn to a side "behind" the building, even though you can't see what's behind it.

 

True I started to notice that I could turn really quickly after passing a building. Still I found there to be too many buildings and the control is loose so I always eventually end up crashing all my planes into buildings. I never lose by getting shot down.

 

Also, it helps to use the air brake.

I beat it. With a hammer, after I loaded it for the first time.

 

Lol from what I have read most people have this sort of feeling toward the game. And I have a feeling 95% of us have the "flying into buildings" problem. The programmers went a little too nuts with how many buildings they put in the game.

 

this game would be so much better with fewer buildings and tightened up controls / framerate.

[Austin]

The game would be better if there were no buildings and it was called After Burner.

[jvgs]

I beat it on easy, but never went back and tried normal. I agree with Isgoed though... as soon as you pass a building, you can fly behind it since it has no depth. Use that to your advantage. And use the brake a lot in the areas with lots of buildings. I still died a lot of times, but I did eventually get through it. And for some reason, I enjoyed the Arctic levels at the end more than any levels up to that point. Maybe because it doesn't have all those annoying buildings.

[PFG 9000]

I beat it around 1997 or so, but I haven't played it much since. I guess I don't hate it as much as most others. I had a lot of fun with it back when it was somewhat "cutting edge," if you can call it that. I never had any trouble with the buildings. I guess I used the airbrake and afterburners (Hah, isn't there a voice in the game that says, "Use airbrakes and afterburners to get behind the enemy" ?) to control my speed. I don't think I veered too far to either side in the city portions either - never more than a screen width to either side. I remember having more trouble with the stone arches and ice arches in the later levels.

 

I remember the last level is a fight against a big, brown jet, with lots of the regular jets flying around too. Wasn't the pilot named Drakkan or something similar? I don't remember what happens after you beat him though. Probably just a short FMV and the credits.

[syntexerror]

Ya i have to agree with you i never found any hardships getting threw the stages with the buildings it was always the stone arcs and glaciers i had a problem with.Hm only thing i can remember about the boss is his horrible annoying voice and laugh hahahahah the end battle was nice though.Havent beat the game since 96 so.....cant remember if there was a end fmv or not.

Edited November 6, 2011 by syntexerror

[Gunstar]

I beat the game on the easy and medium difficulties. I never had a "problem" with the control or running into buildings, sure, I've hit my share of buildings, but on the next try, I've made it past without a hitch. Depending on the situation, I use airbrakes and fast manuvering, and on occasion, I've gone gung-ho and use the barrel roll...sometimes in combination with afterburners and/or airbrakes.

 

I've always enjoyed the game and thought it had great gameplay, that the problem was card-board cut-out looking graphics with no perspective changes and little or no animation. But I figure it's better than the 8 and 16-bit verisions of AfterBurner (not incuding the Arcade and 32-bit+ versions), game-play-wise. An average game in the great scheme of things.

Edited November 6, 2011 by Gunstar

[kevincal]

Ya I guess in more particular the arches I have a problem with, when the game makes you fly through the narrow parts and you have to go up and down to avoid the arches or whatever, thats mainly the parts I hate and always end up crashing the plane. I guess I just need to do more trial and error with the game, I have a tendency to give up to easily.

[KevinMos3]

I beat this game back in the late 90's. I always loved it. I don't remember it being that hard, but I seem to have been better at gaming back then anyway. Case in point... I beat Checkered Flag back then too.

[kevincal]

Ya, I did a semi complete playthrough of this for youtube purposes, and I did a lot better than I usually do. I guess the problem before is I had no incentive to keep playing when I failed. When you are focused and take extra care not to crash into buildings the game becomes more playable, for me anyway. It is pretty fun when you go for awhile without crashing.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM52uZve25M

[+CharlieChaplin]

Well,

 

I first played Blue Lightning on the Lynx. So when I played the game on the Jaguar I did fight one or two days with the controls. But finally I got the hang of it and then BL wasn`t that hard. I played most missions with the standard fighter jet (A10 Thunderbolt) and only in later levels (especially air levels) I did use the F14 Tomcat or the Tornado. The F16 and MIG-29 are quite weak in this game (I only used them for air fights at the beginning missions) and the other british and swedish fighter jets, well forget about them, they are crap (for both air and ground missions).

 

When you play the game for the first time, start with South America or Somewhere in the Pacific, as these missions are the easiest in my eyes. Use these two missions as well as the simulator missions for training and getting used to the controls. North America, Russia and Africa are also not that hard, so choose them next. There was not much to shoot or bomb in Africa and I often got complaints for a too low quota of shooting/bombing (they named it disaster, but therefore I finished the mission alive). Europe should be one of the last missions (before new missions are unlocked), because its a lot tougher than the others. But eventually you will even master that one, I did it with the A10 thunderbolt, as said before.

 

When you have the choice between Napalm or other bombs, I always chose the other bombs, because they were -most of the time- more effective. Regarding crashes and lock-ups, alas this game crashes or locks-up often, so I skipped the FMV whenever possible, but from time to time the game even crashed when I wanted to choose the fighter jet - thats where the Memory track comes into play, meaning save every finished mission. Regarding the end, well when I reached it, I was very disappointed, because the end/outro FMV is even shorter than the intro FMV. On the other hand, the game has lots of "final bosses" (targets, buildings, etc. one has to destroy), cool rock music, nice FMV and the "shoot everything" option for shooting fans. So, BL is not that bad at all, but could have been much better...

 

Last not least, I sold the Jaguar and my CD-ROM many years ago, Blue Lightning, Battlemorph and Hover Strike were the first three games I finished. I do not remember anymore which other games I also finished - but all three of them were mission-based and fun to play. Since I liked the music of BL, Battlemorph, Hover strike, Myst and a few other Jag titles very much, I recorded them with my Hifi system (the in-games music, as well as the CDA track) onto an Audio-CD...

 

-Andreas Koch.

Edited November 21, 2011 by CharlieChaplin

[kevincal]

Thanks for your thoughts on the Jag and games You must be a better player than most, BL And MB are tough games to beat! As are Hoverstrike MYST Baldies, actually I think all Jag cD games are tough

[syntexerror]

I second that it seems most jaguar games are tuff as nails even alot of the cartridge titles like towers2,syndicate,and robinsons requiem were some of the hardest games i have played to date but they were all fun as hell to me .

[Rick Dangerous]

Just picked this up as I've been playing it on the Lynx and Afterburner for 32x. Ready to be let down big time!! Anyone feeling favorable towards this game these days?

[Isgoed]

I still enjoy it these days.

 

Use the airbrake a lot, and focus on shooting as much targets as possible.

 

The music is very nice and fits the game well imo.

[JagChris]

Yeah I beat it a long time ago.

[Austin]

Just picked this up as I've been playing it on the Lynx and Afterburner for 32x. Ready to be let down big time!! Anyone feeling favorable towards this game these days?

 

Not really favorable per-se, but it's not horrendous and can be mildly enjoyable. There's definitely worse on the Jaguar. I just wish the character's plane wasn't so damn big. Also, ammo at the beginning is kind of limited. It's a drag when you run out of homing missiles, the basic machine gun is pretty useless for a lot of enemies.

[minux]

The old joke with Blue Lightning was it was what Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer used to learn to fly for Top Gun...

[ZylonBane]

The old joke with Blue Lightning was it was what Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer used to learn to fly for Top Gun...

Considering that the Lynx version came out three years after Top Gun, I'm very much doubting anyone made that joke, ever.