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Strike series corner  "For discussions about Electronic Arts' Strike series of games"

User is offline   NY00123 

#1

So, it was 5 years ago when I created the Duke Corner: https://forums.duke4...87-duke-corner/

Thus, why not have another one?

Strike (video game series)

Desert Strike
Jungle Strike
Urban Strike

Soviet Strike
Nuclear Strike

Bonus points:

Future Cop: LAPD (originally planned as a 5th sequel titled "Future Strike")
Super Strike Trilogy (unreleased video game compilation)

This post has been edited by NY00123: 01 April 2021 - 08:03 AM

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User is offline   MrFlibble 

#2

I remember seeing ads for Jungle Strike in video gaming mags in the early-mid 90s. They impressed on me an image of an iconic game, even though I did not play it back then. One mag that I had also featured a review of Soviet Strike, with live-action newsfeed FMVs or something. Pretty cool. Also for some reason, I got the wrong impression that Jungle Strike was the first game in the series instead of Desert Strike.

Only relatively recently I discovered a playable demo of Jungle Strike on a magazine coverdisk. It's nice I guess? The action part is fairly straightforward, the graphics are good. I tried looking for some possibly open-source remakes or inspired games but found none, oddly enough.

This post has been edited by MrFlibble: 02 April 2021 - 09:01 AM

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User is offline   NY00123 

#3

View PostMrFlibble, on 02 April 2021 - 09:01 AM, said:

I remember seeing ads for Jungle Strike in video gaming mags in the early-mid 90s. They impressed on me an image of an iconic game, even though I did not play it back then. One mag that I had also featured a review of Soviet Strike, with live-action newsfeed FMVs or something. Pretty cool. Also for some reason, I got the wrong impression that Jungle Strike was the first game in the series instead of Desert Strike.


Originally, I knew just about Jungle Strike for DOS. It took about 7 years before learning about the DOS port of Desert Strike. The 3rd game in the series, Urban Strike, wasn't ported to DOS. Until recently, I wasn't really familiar with the other games (including Urban Strike) or versions for other platforms, although I had short look into a Nuclear Strike demo for Windows at some earlier point.

Quote

Only relatively recently I discovered a playable demo of Jungle Strike on a magazine coverdisk. It's nice I guess? The action part is fairly straightforward, the graphics are good.


The demo should cover the 4th level of the game. The same level in the full game differs by occurring at night, thus having a darker appearance.
Originally, I checked out a bit later demo, in which the game automatically ends after completing the first 4 missions. It also has a smaller DAT file, presumably following the removal of contents from other levels. It's a part of a collection of CDs named "101: Only the Best Games":

http://cd.textfiles....3/PAGE1/JUNGLE/
https://archive.org/...lythebestgames3

I actually wasn't exposed to the demo via this collection, but rather via a different CD, advertised as a collection of 200 shareware games, and having Hebrew-written menus and translations of game names.

A recent find of mine is an early DOS demo version of Desert Strike. It's more like a beta, e.g., a subset of the sound effects differ or play with a different rate (or rates). The game data further resides in separate external files, instead of a single DAT archive. There's just one accessible level, which looks like an early form of the first level with a subset of the missions: https://www.dosgames.../desert-strike/

Quote

I tried looking for some possibly open-source remakes or inspired games but found none, oddly enough.


There's at least one inspired game if you know how to find any, albeit I don't recall the state of any such game.
As of writing this, the last commit in the following repository is from 2014, but it at least lets you view/extract contents of DOS versions, even if not all of them: https://github.com/AMDmi3/openstrike
The Wombat File Tools also appear to have some level of compatibility: https://szevvy.com/

A bit trickier bit is the game executable. With the possible exception of the Desert Strike demo version, generally speaking, the DESERT.EXE/JUNGLE.EXE file is not much more than a small loader. The actual game executable resides in DESERT.DAT/JUNGLE.DAT, albeit in a kind of a packed form. Chances are the way to unpack it was found, as the games were obviously cracked in the 90s in a manner which would probably involve modification of executable code in the DAT files.

Either way, you may finally unpack the EXEs with a tool that can be obtained from here: https://gitlab.com/N...exeu/-/releases
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User is offline   MrFlibble 

#4

View PostNY00123, on 03 April 2021 - 01:49 PM, said:

The demo should cover the 4th level of the game. The same level in the full game differs by occurring at night, thus having a darker appearance.

Yup, I had to look through a video on YouTube to determine this (I wanted to know if the demo has a completely unique level or not).

View PostNY00123, on 03 April 2021 - 01:49 PM, said:

Originally, I checked out a bit later demo, in which the game automatically ends after completing the first 4 missions. It also has a smaller DAT file, presumably following the removal of contents from other levels. It's a part of a collection of CDs named "101: Only the Best Games":

http://cd.textfiles....3/PAGE1/JUNGLE/
https://archive.org/...lythebestgames3

I wasn't aware of the different demo, thanks for the tip!

View PostNY00123, on 03 April 2021 - 01:49 PM, said:

A recent find of mine is an early DOS demo version of Desert Strike. It's more like a beta, e.g., a subset of the sound effects differ or play with a different rate (or rates). The game data further resides in separate external files, instead of a single DAT archive. There's just one accessible level, which looks like an early form of the first level with a subset of the missions: https://www.dosgames.../desert-strike/

There is actually an even earlier demo with roughly the same mission but a smaller viewport and less selectable options. It can be found on this PC Gamer CD.

Concerning inspired games, there's an old German game called Helicopter Mission which aims for the same kind f isometric visuals, but it's a promo/recruiting game for Bundeswehr and does not feature any combat.
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User is offline   DNSKILL5 

  • Honored Donor

#5

I never realized there were that many titles to this series. I had only ever heard of the first three that were on SNES and GEN/MD. I'll have to check out the other ones.
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User is offline   NY00123 

#6

Posting about additional information for the earlier games (mostly the first two), based on Wikipedia pages, screenshots from this page and other sources: https://www.mobygame...ulf/screenshots

- The first 3 titles in the series were initially released for the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive.
- The Amiga and DOS versions of Desert Strike share a title screen and menu UI, which differ from the originals in the Genesis version.
- The Amiga version of Jungle Strike, on the other hand, was designed to be more faithful to the original. This also covered the menu UI.
- The DOS version of Jungle Strike re-uses the menu from the Amiga/DOS port of Desert Strike.
- The menu in the DOS versions of Desert Strike and Jungle Strike has the background of Desert Strike's title screen. (The Amiga version uses a separate background.)
- As for as I know, you can't use the mouse for moving the cursor in the menus of the DOS versions (unlike the Amiga version of Desert Strike).
- Desert Strike for DOS re-uses an adaptation of Jungle Strike music for DOS. This includes the title music.
- While Urban Strike for the Genesis can take advantage of 6-button controllers, this reportedly leads to broken/skipped cutscenes, including ones which may cover important information.

View PostMrFlibble, on 04 April 2021 - 04:45 AM, said:

There is actually an even earlier demo with roughly the same mission but a smaller viewport and less selectable options. It can be found on this PC Gamer CD


Thanks for informing me about this demo! It's similar to the later one in the sense that the game appears to automatically end after some time, at least after completing the first/sole mission. It still shares its differences. I generally use the largest possible viewport, but I saw that it can also be reduced in other versions.

Quote

Concerning inspired games, there's an old German game called Helicopter Mission which aims for the same kind f isometric visuals, but it's a promo/recruiting game for Bundeswehr and does not feature any combat.


Haven't checked enough of it, but it's true that I haven't seen combat.
Here's a video of an apparently abandoned fan remake, Alligator Strike (using Desert Strike's title music as a base):
Last I checked, you could still download a demo version.

View PosthoG5oh, on 05 April 2021 - 04:56 AM, said:

I never realized there were that many titles to this series. I had only ever heard of the first three that were on SNES and GEN/MD. I'll have to check out the other ones.


Guess that you can later figure out what you'll think about these. What's clear is that they aren't based on the same engine used for the preceding 3 games, so differences in experience are expected.
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User is offline   Cherno 

#7

I started working on a Desert Strike TC for GZDoom around last year. I got pretty far, including creating all of the assets for the first level, and the gameplay mechanics are mostly done, too. I haven't worked on it in months, though, but I will get backto it some day and release it, even if it's just a demo with the first level.

Posted Image
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User is offline   NY00123 

#8

I've given the Alligator Strike demo a try. As expected, it basically feels like Desert Strike with a newer engine. In terms of gameplay, if you're familiar with Desert/Jungle/Urban Strike, you should know what to expect. Of course, not anything is fully the same. Chopper control will probably feel different; There are also separate keys for strafing, if you want to use these. To summarize, you can give it a try if you're interested.

View PostCherno, on 06 April 2021 - 12:13 PM, said:

I started working on a Desert Strike TC for GZDoom around last year. I got pretty far, including creating all of the assets for the first level, and the gameplay mechanics are mostly done, too. I haven't worked on it in months, though, but I will get backto it some day and release it, even if it's just a demo with the first level.


I saw you writing about the TC outside of these forums beforehand. Looks like you indeed got far enough. Let's hope you'll eventually release the TC, even if it isn't finished.
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