When I first saw action fighter screenshots I thought what a boring plain game, I couldn't have been more wrong. After getting my DOSbox settings correct (about one thousand to two thousand CPU cycles) I started playing.
You are a secret agent driving three different vehicles (a bike, a car and an airplane) and destroying your given targets presented in the briefing at the beginning of the mission. There are five fast paced levels to make your way through which all start off in the street and loop endlessly until you complete the mission by collecting all the letters from the SEGA van.
When I first saw action fighter screenshots I thought what a boring plain game, I couldn't have been more wrong. After getting my DOSbox settings correct (about one thousand to two thousand CPU cycles) I started playing.
You are a secret agent driving three different vehicles (a bike, a car and an airplane) and destroying your given targets presented in the briefing at the beginning of the mission. There are five fast paced levels to make your way through which all start off in the street and loop endlessly until you complete the mission by collecting all the letters from the SEGA van.
Once you've collected D letter you become a car and once you collect all the letters available, F, you
drive off a ramp and become an airplane, and after that mission you face a boss which is quite hard the first few try’s. This is a game you should expect to die on quite frequently until you get the hang of it.
There are little arrows above the screen to direct your bike/car round corners and off ramps but the main obstacles are the cars and bikes that are on the road with you, at the beginning you are quite unprotected but as the game progresses it all becomes much easier.
The game really shows it's age at times but still has some fun parts, like weapon upgrades (especially the backwards firing gun) ,the diverse amount of enemies and the different array of vehicles you get to try out.
Some bits of the game were quite confusing without a manual or any sort of instructions aside from the very small briefing at the beginning of a level but once you get into the game it all becomes quite obvious.
The age of the game shows mostly in the graphics and little features like no saving (that I know of) and I think there definitely could have been more to the game in general but from a 1989 game I didn't expect anything ground breaking.
All in all Action Fighter is very hard to get into but once you get the hang of it, it becomes a very intricate and intense game.
My game play tip would be to play slowly to begin with and only go on speed setting 1, maybe 2 to get used to the sensitive controls and pick up all the weapons upgrades (little SEGA van you drive into the back of). Have fun gaming!
