''Pacific Strike'' is a

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

combat flight simulation video game developed by

Origin Systems Origin Systems, Inc. was an American video game developer based in Austin, Texas. It was founded on March 3, 1983, by Richard Garriott and his brother Robert Garriott, Robert. Origin is best known for their groundbreaking work in multiple genres ...

and released by

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the ...

for

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

1994 File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which sank in the Baltic Sea; Nelson ...

. The game follows the pattern of the ''

Wing Commander Wing commander (Wg Cdr in the RAF, the IAF, and the PAF, WGCDR in the RNZAF and RAAF, formerly sometimes W/C in all services) is a senior commissioned rank in the British Royal Air Force and air forces of many countries which have historical ...

'' series, although it has a greater resemblance to its cousin '' Strike Commander'' in the sense that it is set in a more or less contemporary setting and allows the player to fly actual planes. The game, just like the above-mentioned titles, mixes aerial simulation with a cinematic plot structured through a series of cutscenes that play between missions. Unlike the above-mentioned titles, ''Pacific Strike'' was only released in a floppy disk version, while the others were released had CD-ROM versions featuring improved cut-scenes and more digitized speech. A remake, ''Zero Pilot: Ginyoku no Senshi'', was released in Japan for the PlayStation in 1998.

Plot

Gameplay is very similar to Origin's '' Strike Commander''. Unlike it or the ''Wing Commander'' series, ''Pacific Strike'' immerses the player into a real historical context as an American pilot during the months following the Japanese

attack on Pearl Harbor The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii ...

, flying aircraft from a carrier and performing missions like reconnaissance, intercepting enemy planes or attacking enemy vessels. If the player does well it is possible to defeat the

Empire of Japan The also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II Constitution of Japan, 1947 constitu ...

without recourse to the atomic bomb. Extremely poor performance could result in the defeat of the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

and the ceding of Hawaii to the Empire.

Reception

'' Computer Gaming World'' rated ''Pacific Strike'' 1.5 stars out of five. Reporting that Origin apologized on CompuServe for the game's problems, the magazine cited poor performance and mediocre graphics compared to '' 1942: The Pacific Air War'', and weak sound, and said that the game needed "deep and fundamental changes". In 1996, ''Computer Gaming World'' declared ''Pacific Strike'' the 17th-worst computer game ever released.

References

External links

* * * {{Origin Systems 1994 video games Combat flight simulators DOS games DOS-only games Origin Systems games Pacific War video games Video games developed in the United States Video games set in Hawaii Video games set in Japan Video games set in the Marshall Islands Video games set in Oceania Video games set in the Solomon Islands World War II flight simulation video games