A helicopter flight simulator: pilot an AH-64 Apache gunship over a 3D landscape of landing pads, buildings, trees, pylons, mountains, enemy tanks, field guns and helicopters. The instructions list four missions: flying training, a short combat mission, a mission in enemy territory to liberate the map, and a strategic battle for the front line. Options set day or night (with a pilot’s night-vision system), clear or cloudy skies with a selectable cloudbase, crosswinds and turbulence, sound, a pilot rating from Trainee through Squadron and Instructor to Ace, and keyboard or joystick control.
The instrument panel has bar-scale and dial instruments for collective lever position, engine torque, turbine and rotor speed, throttle, fuel, engine temperature, airspeed, altitude and vertical speed, and a Target Acquisition and Designation System (TADS) that identifies and tracks tanks, field guns and helicopters. Weapons are a 30 mm chain gun with 1,200 rounds, 38 unguided rockets and 8 laser-guided Hellfire missiles.
What’s in the download
- The tape as TAP, TZX and WAV.
- Scans of the cassette and J-card and an 11-page PDF of the instructions (with its Affinity Publisher source).
Program Analysis
The BASIC loader tomahawk does CLEAR 27583, loads a 4,990-byte code block at 32768, then calls RANDOMIZE USR 26715: machine code held in the REM of line 1. That code loads the rest of the game from two headerless blocks of 22,616 and 20,738 bytes, which use non-standard flag bytes, so they cannot be loaded with an ordinary LOAD ""CODE. The instructions describe a security-code entry procedure on start-up.
Image Gallery
Note: Type-in program listings on this website use ZMAKEBAS notation for graphics characters.