Operation Wolf

Copyright : Ocean Software | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

The number 1 arcade hit of 1988 is recreated perfectly - 6 levels of thrilling coin-op action are brought to live on your home micro. Without fast and accurate shooting skills you will never complete your mission which takes you through steaming jungles and enemy strongholds as you attempt to liberate the prisoners and secure a safe getaway. With all the original arcade features - magazine reloads, energy bottles, hidden supplies, rocket grenades and much much more.

Well that is what Ocean and Taito had to say on the back of the original inlay for every single conversion of this classic coin operated Arcade (coin-op). Operation Wolf has since been emulated by the RAINE development team, much to the joy of the fans that loved pumping money into the arcade machine.

But could a conversion to home computer be any good? I mean you don?t get the sound, graphics or hand held gun that you get in the arcades so how does it rate?

Graphics

There are only 6 relatively small levels to Operation Wolf but the trick is to keep your damage bar to a minimum and kill the bad guys before they get a chance to unload magazines and grenades on you.

Graphics are very well drawn indeed, those enemies that come right up to your face with anything from an old fashioned uniform to a bullet proof vest look awesome and you can see the pain they are in when you shoot them to the ground. Ocean have put a lot of thought into the colours used in each of the levels are I must admit that they have done an excellent job, in the jungle it?s very difficult to work out if an enemy is shooting you or if it?s one the bushes.

Sound

Sound is of top notch conversion rate by Ocean, this time we don?t have a dubbed soundtrack we actually get explosions, well done sounds, music in-between completing levels and dying and of course sounds when you do something stupid like kill a hostage or a nurse. While we don?t get any sampled speach in this conversion it?s not such a bad thing because sample rates in the late 80?s early 90?s were not that high anyway. Taito?s theme tune has also been converted at the start of the game - good stuff.

Gameplay

Now gameplay, providing you are a good shot and have a keen eye you should be able to make it through at least the first 3-4 levels without being killed in the line of duty but I must say that things do get a little heavy later in the game. There is also a noticable amount of slow-down once the screen gets overly full of enemies but providing you shoot them all before it happens there shouldn?t be a problem. Because you have no gun to play with you will be using keys or a joystick and that isn?t such a bad thing because your target is very responsive which helps the game from being the nigshtmlare it could have been to the joy it is.