F-117A Stealth Fighter

Genre: Combat Flight Sim

Players: 1

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Review:

F-117A Stealth Fighter is a Combat Flight Sim originally released on the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1992 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2020.

This game attempted to simulate 3D graphics on the primitive hardware of its time in much the same way that contemporaries like Afterburner and Top Gun did, but I would argue that even compared to other games at the time, the results were severely lacking, with 2D visuals that not only did a poor job of smoothly displaying terrain and enemies in a way that would make sense to the player, but also failed to convey important information in a way that could be easily understood by the player. This is paired with a chiptune soundtrack that may have been sufficient for the time, but isn’t anything noteworthy or memorable.

That’s using a measuring stick of “at the time this game was released”. By today’s standards, this game is almost unplayable. You’re given little indication where to go aside from apparently a red arrow at the top of the screen (I’m guessing that points to enemies) no sort of radar or anything indicating enemy position relative to you, and even when you do come close to an enemy, you’re more likely to hear the beeping indicating a lock-on well before you get any sort of visual sign of their existence. Once you do actually see them, they move in such a choppy way that it almost seems like they’re teleporting around your screen.

I can only think of one sort of person who will actually enjoy F-117A Stealth Fighter, and that is someone who played it back in its original Nintendo Entertainment System release and somehow formed fond memories of it. However, since this game was a somewhat obscure release, and not an especially great one even at the time, I can’t imagine that description applies to many people. Odds are good that if you’re reading this, F-117A Stealth Fighter will have nothing to offer you but confusion and frustration.

tl;dr – F-117A Stealth Fighter is a port of an only Nintendo Entertainment System Combat Flight Sim, but even when this game was first released it wasn’t an especially good game, and time has not been kind to it. Unless you somehow harbor nostalgia for this game, don’t waste your money on it.

Grade: D-

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