 I've talked about pick-up-and-play games, meaning games that have a simple display with simple controls that just about anyone can get the hang of, and I've talked about pick-up-and-die games, meaning really difficult games where you pretty much just have to die many, many times to get any progress in the game. Then there's games that developer Rare makes for the NES, some of which fall into a different category, being pick-up and what the hell even is this? Marble Madness falls into this category, and Solar Jetman as well. Both of those games have very particular controls that are tough to even approach, let alone get used to, but both of those are still good games. Rare also developed Captain's Skyhawk, and it also falls into that pick-up and what even is this category as well, but I'm not totally sure it's a good game. On the surface, it looks awesome, as most Rare NES games do, but it is tough to get into, and this time not just because of the controls and the unconventional display, but also the difficulty. You play as a fighter jet, getting five lives and three continues to get through nine levels with no saves or passwords, with some levels featuring unique objectives like dropping off supplies in these holes here, picking up passengers, or docking with your space station once your mission is complete. The trouble here is with the controls, they feature the now-traditional pilot controls, where to climb you press down and to dive you press up, but it's a bit rough around the edges to say the least. The controls are just a bit drifty and slow to respond, I guess you can get used to them eventually, but I sure as hell had a hard time doing that. It was just tough for my primitive brain to predict when my fighter jet would stop drifting once I let go of left or right on the D-pad. You can also hold select while pressing left or right, and you do a barrel roll! Sorry, just fulfilling my obligations. Another major issue here is with the very first level, it's kind of a Zaxxon style, only you're flying straight ahead, but you're still skimming the ground and shooting stuff as you go. The problem is that there's so much debris when you blow something up, it can be tough to determine between what are the smoldering remains of your enemies, and what's an enemy projectile coming at you. I swear I died like 20 times on this first level alone. It doesn't help that in many cases you get so caught up in dodging projectiles that you end up crashing into the terrain. It took a long while, but I finally got the rhythm down and I was able to better recognize enemy projectiles while not crashing into stuff, but yeah, some of you out there may not have that kind of patience. You do get rewarded for your patience though, in the form of these stages here. It's essentially the NES doing its version of Afterburner, and it's pretty dang good. The controls feel a bit more forgiving since you have a little more space to work with, and it's simple, seek and destroy enemy fighters. I should mention that you collect credits from each enemy you destroy, and if you're able to successfully dock with your space station, you can use those to upgrade your default weapon or to buy bonus weapons, and there's three extra to choose from. Intercept missiles, air-to-ground missiles, and Hawk bombs, but the game kind of holds your hand here a bit and only makes bombs available on certain levels where they're, you know, actually useful. There is a story here, but it's nothing you can't guess or even make up yourself. Aliens have invaded Earth and have built four bases across the planet designed to drain Earth's energy somehow, in order to feed their own space station thing, I guess. You, as Captain Skyhawk, have been chosen to fly a fighter jet designed to buy scientists, so sayeth the instruction manual. Shouldn't engineers be designing those instead of scientists? Anyway, you fly the F-14 VTS to make stuff go boom until there's no more stuff to go boom. Anyway, Captain Skyhawk gets plenty of points for looking really cool, but the Drifty controls and the difficulty here means that you have to be really patient to get into this one. I will say, when you die, the checkpoints are pretty forgiving, since you start reasonably close to where you died, but that's not gonna make up for the game's flaws. If you really want to play a shooter similar to this, I'd roll with the aforementioned Zaxxon or Afterburner, even on the Sega Master System. They're just much more approachable than this one. If you do approach Captain Skyhawk on the NES, be prepared for a lot of frustration. Yeah, there's some good stuff here, but you gotta put the work in to get to it. Alright, I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.