Raid Over Moscow

Ahhh, the good old times of the Soviet Union, where a bad guy was always available, without having to rely on some weird and uninspired covenant. That's right, today we have a relic from the cold war, the 1985 hit (at least in Finland), Raid Over Moscow. Developed by Access Software, it was published under the US Gold label for the Atari 8-bit series, the C64, the Amstrad CPC, the BBC Micro, the ZX Spectrum and the Apple II.

About the game: The player takes the role of a USAF stealth fighter pilot. The objective is to prevent soviet missiles to reach US cities by destroying their missile silos before the clock runs out, eventually destroying Moscow nuclear facilities. What was great about this game is the fact that each phase had its own gameplay (most games of the time simply add more and/or faster enemies between levels).
The game starts with a overview of the northern hemisphere, where the soviet silos are shown. When the missiles are fired, the player has to take a fighter out of a space station (!), and flight it to the appropriate silo. What is interesting about this is that since the fighters take off from a space station, it is done in vacuum and 0G's, forcing the player to account for inertia. Today, this is very cool; in 1985 it was mindblowing.


In the 2nd phase, one has to navigate through the soviet ground defences. It plays pretty much like a Gradius-style shooter, but you can control altitude as well. If you fly to low, you'll face ground defences, if you fly to high, you'll be picked up by radar and shot down by SAM missiles. Once again, unbelievably cool.


The 3rd and final stage, the player, now on foot, has to destroy the Kremlin defences,in order to gain access to the main nuclear facility, kill the boss, and put an end to the soviet nuclear project. This is done in a bare-chested, testosterone-pumped commando-style, destroying the Kremlin with a shoulder-mounted rocket luncher.



All in all, a very very good game.

The good: almost everything, an excellent game.
The bad: the 2nd phase is very repetitive
The ugly: nothing worth mentioning

Tip: the game is a little tricky. In order to open the hangar doors, gain some altitude and press F8. But be careful, too much altitude and you'll crash above the door.

Trivia: this game became huge in Finland because a communist friendly member of the Finnish Parliament questioned its legality, therefore generating drama, which in turn, generated high sales.

The Commodore 64 version can be found here. Run it on a most excellent C64 emulator and have fun.
Check the retro skills page CCS64 section for instructions on how to set up CCS64 emulator.