Fire Hawk (Arcade)

What has the shape of a bird and on fire? The legendary Phoenix! Yes, but this time only the answer: fire hawk. Because, today i review ESD's Fire Hawk (2001)!

There's 2 possibility if you see an arcade game with aircraft on the opening: 1) Arcade-y simflight like Sega's Afterburner 2) Vertical/Horizontal Shooter game. Fire Hawk is the latter ones. Don't expect too much from unpopular company like ESD. But maybe there's great distinctive feature on it, right? We shall see!

There's no backstory about the game setting or what's the enemy. We can assume that they're evil organization that on to conquer the world or something like that. But look! Aircraft selection in the start. I reckon approximately 60% of arcade shooter game have that so Fire Hawk stands out a bit. That's something. From left to right we got: Eagle, Fire Hawk, Phantom, Harrier, and Night Hawk. The fire hawk's origin is Korea, that comes unsurprisingly as ESD is Korean Company. Most likely South ones. Because i don't think any Kim Jong will approves fun stuff like arcade game. Unless for embedded with tons of nationalism propaganda. As much as i want to be in The Night Hawk because it's definitely F-117A my favorite for this entire game, i have to choose from Eagle for thorough review. Do remember about the order of this plane as it's important later!

 

Another think that isn't surprising is the gameplay. It's so generic. You got joystick to move your plane and 2 buttons: one for shooting your standard arsenal and the another one for screen-clearing bomb.

By charging shoot button for quite eternity 2 seconds or so, you can unleash special barrage weapon for some duration. In Eagle's case: rapid purple plasma of destruction. Also there's pick-up items like: power-up item, score-up item, or extra bomb. So far so ordinary. But there's icon with number 4 on it, on leftside. Once i pick it up...

...my aircraft become the 4th plane: Harrier. Here's the reason why i told you to memorize the plane's order so you have idea about what you will become if you pick this item. Harrier has wider shoot pattern than Eagle. So i got lucky here.

 

Finally i become F-117A, the "Ghost" of Baghdad and i terrorize this ghost town judging by those creepy mist. Maybe i fly above Silent Hill.

"Warning" signs impending of Boss stage. So generic. Furthermore the color is solid grey. Lame.

 

The boss isn't resemble any kind of conventional aircraft. So i assume it's flying fortress. I put my soul and heart at the right plane as Night Hawk's charged attack is Rocket Hadou Ken as you can see here.     

Surprising to me, the boss has second form. It's faster and more mobile. But with enough bullets (which is dozens of them), it will goes down.

 

Then i got docked on a carrier with sweet elevator music. Thank you, Kaga!

 

On next stage i become the Brazil's aircraft Phantom. This is both good and bad. Good because its weapon has wide pattern. Bad because it shoots Cheetos. That hardly strikes fear to the enemies.  

 

Phantom has the same bomb with Eagle. There's 3 bomb type among the planes: 1) The swirling explosion like this one 2) The common ordinary explosion 3) 2 smaller explosion but "move" forward. There's small difference between type 1 and type 2. I think the former has more duration than the latter but slightly smaller radius. I think i have seen type 1 here before.

 

It's quite resemble with bomb from Raiden Fighters 2! Minus the shrapnel, of course. Now that i look more carefully. Fire Hawk has a number of similarity to mentioned Seibu Kaihatsu's vertical shooter like charged attack and airplane selection. But sadly FH is less fun. The ship selection is lack in number and quality, no option, the standard weapons are lack in visual and impact, the charged attack takes too long time, the graphic is not smooth or slick, and the music is gritty. That's some bad thing that i feel when compared to RF 2.      

 

Oh, boss stage already? Show me what you got! What? You're outdone by 2 bombs. Ok! Nice knowing you.

 

Then i lay barrage on a Pyramid. Not because i'm eager to do vandalism to ancient Egypt's heritage. I do this because the enemies disguised it as bullet launcher. So don't send bad comment on me, please!

 

See that bigger Pyramid? It's the genuine ones. I can't shoot it even i want to because it's just background wonderful ancient heritage that need to preserve.

 

The boss stage is another giant tank but with drills on its front. How adorable! It has slightly more constituent than the last boss. How pity!

 

Another cute thing is these tanks that run on railway. Too bad, they're enemies. So i have to settle them by raining them with these hot Cheetos.    

 

Hey, i know that fortified wall! That's certainly from Age of Empires 2. The enemies lack of stone to build either extra wall or gate to close the fortification. Lucky for them, it's me with aircraft that can be destroyed with single bullet, that attack them instead of horde of paladin, champion, monk, Onager, and crossbowman. But they can't do next to nothing against air warfare unlike me. The monks? No way. They can't survive for long under intense bombardment by the enemy. Let alone converting an enemy. The crossbowmen? Pfft, no! Have you ever heard the thing about bringing arrows to aircraft fight? That's right!  

 

The boss is another futuristic flying fortress. Is that thing consume so many stone to build? I assume so. I notice that the background of this river turn and grounded plane is repeating during the boss fight. It seems ESD start to run out creativity. What a shame.

 

Here's fire hawk itself in action on next stage which is north pole or sort like that. He can shoot pure and thicker Hadou Ken. So it's inferior than night hawk, sadly. Speaking of charged shoot: power up item will boost your charged shoot's duration beside making your standard arsenal stronger.

This stage's boss is something giant on rail in this bridge. Moving fortress i assume. I say the boss design is futuristic and great even though the bosses got nothing beyond have turrets that can fill roughly 80% of the screen with bullets. But, they will be less dangerous if you destroy their part which is nice and reasonable feature.   

 

On the next stage, there's air mines that can shoot bullet. They're no more efficient than manned planes/choppers. At least they don't need pilot's salary to operate.

 

This boss stage is more interesting: airship, like in Final Fantasy IX! But it's annoying to fight in the last moment as you can only hit it in that triple cannon on the most back part, which can be difficult to hit because it constantly sways.

Next stage takes place in river turn with grounded plane, again? At this moment, i fear that Fire Hawk is kind of endless vertical shooter like Varth or Flying Shark with repetitive background. Luckily, no. This repetitive part is only a small portion of this stage.

 

Oh, the game gives me Change power-up and 1UP item before boss fight. How generous! Speaking of changing your vehicle, you can't do that if you use continue unlike -you know- other vertical shooter. The devs must be thinking that selecting player's aircraft when using continue is mundane if you can have power-up that can do the same thing but not fully determined by the player. Good job, ESD! [sarcasm or not, depends on reader]

 

It's bigger and super-up version of F117A. I like to fight it fair and square with the night hawk but alas! I'm stuck with pitiful Eagle.

 

I didn't know that there's boss rush in any vertical shooter game. And here they are. On final stage here, you have to re-defeat boss stage that you have destroy before. Not good feature, i tell you.  

 

At least there's highway above islands and that red futuristic terminal for pretty neat scenery.

 

The final boss is space shuttle along with its rocket. It's quite easier than any bosses so far. Because it's just space shuttle for God Sake. Not even modified with weapons, can make it tremendous threat. I assume the evil organization's leader attempt to escape to outer space but i foil his/her plan along with his/her live. Engineer_specialcompleted10.wav     

 

No epilogue if you finish that damn space shuttle only credit rolls. Figures. At least ESD thanks you for playing this pretty generic shooter game (even with small fonts) and i feel appreciated. Scout_thanks02.wav  

As you probably can guess that ESD's Fire Hawk (2001) is your  generic vertical shooter. It can be in the lump of usual arcade game in 90's. But it came out in 2001, instead. Quite something, huh? The musics are ignorable, except in the Carrier. The graphic is so-so and that AoE 2's walls lives the game a bit. I honestly want more ripped asset in this game more. The gameplay is nothing ordinary except for change mechanism. The standard arsenal are distinctive in visual and powerful even in the lowest power level. But i feel that there's not much different in power among the aircraft. So to me, the best thing is to choose the one who has spread pattern shoot. The charging shoot inflict deadly damage but it takes too long to charge leaving you defenseless. Also once you unleash it you will more likely get decimated immediately, that's my case anyway. The game consist of 8 levels that can be finished within an hour. So it's mercifully short.

My summary: if you are vertical shooter fans/connoisseur or you want simple fun, you can give ESD's Fire Hawk. Though i want you to play Seibu Kaihatsu's Raiden Fighters 2, simply because it's much better. Except if you're really curious about it. I'm not gonna stop you. I'm not your parent, anyway.