Falcon Patrol

User Summary

Although the name would link this game to the F-16 Fighting Falcon, the player actually flies a Harrier in this action game. Or so it seems by the front of the box and your vertical take off and landing capabilities.

The game doesn't offer any story or campaign; once you hit start, you're on the roof of one of your airbases in some middle east terrain (flat roof buildings and palm trees) and enemy fighters start coming in. When you take off, you can either fly left or right, but eventually you'll pass over your point of departure, so the left side of the map is sort of stitched to the right side.

Your objective is to use the 3 jets at your disposal to obliterate the incoming enemy fighters (first waves of two, slowly increasing) who'll shoot at you and bomb your several airbases scattered over the field, thus limiting the places you can land to rearm and refuel. You'll have 100 rockets (yeah!) and some fuel at your disposal, and mostly the latter will be running out first. You then land vertically at one of your airbases, to be refueled and rearmed, during which time you're a sitting duck for enemy aircraft.

Destroying enemy airplanes adds to your score, but there's no other way of winning this game other than achieving the high score. Still, it's one of those highly addictive simple shooters of a past era.

The game is downloadable from several sites as abandonware.