When it comes to NES games that are notorious for their insane difficulty, Top Gun is definitely one that hangs at the top of the list. It was one that was probably one of the reasons our dad bought an NES for our household, he put all kinds of hours into this and could land the plane nearly every time. I can't think of many flight simulator action games for the NES, and After Burner was my only frame of comparison at the time. Playing it again as an adult is quite the rush.

Produced and published by Konami and released in 1987, it bears some similarities in concept to the Ocean developed Top Gun that was for the Amstrad CPC a year before. Graphics and performance aside, one of the differences is, that game actually used images related to the movie, whereas the NES game bears zero likenesses of Tom Cruise or Kelly McGillis. This also means gamers were deprived of a pixelated version of the greatest game of volleyball ever played.

While some of the imagery looks pretty decent, there really isn't a lot to look at with Top Gun. Half of the screen is a dashboard of the F-14 fighter plane's cockpit, and a radar. Simplistic with a basic color scheme, but does what it needs to do, as far as presenting something resembling high intense dogfights. You're mostly looking at a lot of clouds or water, so solid colors like white, yellow, and blue are prominent. There's minimal frames of animation, it's a deceptive trick to avoid slowdown and gives off the impression that Top Gun performs pretty fast.

Uh, music is pretty much nonexistent beyond menu screens. It's decent, while far from being in the more memorable category of Konami tunes. So the ambience of the roaring jet engine, sprinkled with the occasional gunfire and explosions will either be aesthetically pleasing or it could slowly drive you insane after lengthy plays. The "low fuel" alert is like if you put the Legend of Zelda heart chime in one ear and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' health beep in the other, then smashed them together like atoms in the Hadron Collider.

As mentioned before, this game is insanely difficult and very unforgiving. The dogfighting, offense, and defense can be best described as snug and intense. Enemy F-14s will tail you and shoot you down if you don't get the bogie off your six in time. You do have a health bar that can be depleted by vulcan cannons, but it barely seems to matter when the other threats are factored. Missiles are one-shot kills. In the first true mission, aircraft carriers and submarines fire them en masse With only three lives total, you'll get wiped out quick. I haven't even mentioned the landing of the plane after every successful mission. Not only do you have to survive the brutal onslaught of enemy fire, AND properly refill your tank in mid-air, you also have to safely land your craft. It costs one life for every failure, and getting the science down on it can be a little tricky, it's never not daunting. One of the things that makes Top Gun so hard is how little practice you'll get to sharpen those skills in the key areas you'll need. 

Top Gun can chew your face, spit it back on, tell you you're pretty, and still make you go to the prom (I don't even know what any of that means). It is a good game, if you're willing to tolerate a very advanced difficulty. It controls well enough, and is a pretty progressive combat flight simulator for its time. Not many NES games hold up well after almost 40 years, I'd say this is one of them.