[NY00123]

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)

[MrFlibble]

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.

[NY00123]

MrFlibble, 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/

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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

[MrFlibble]

NY00123, 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).

NY00123, 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!

NY00123, 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.

[dnskill]

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.

[NY00123]

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.

MrFlibble, 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.

hoG5oh, 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.

[Cherno]

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.

[NY00123]

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.

Cherno, 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.

[NY00123]

So, looks like it's the sole thread bump following the first 9 days since creating the thread back in April 2021.

I gave the earlier Desert Strike demo previously referenced by MrFlibble another try, this time recording a video 6 days ago.

More generally, I've got a playlist of videos recorded by me here: https://www.youtube....uREheeHXSjlr6FC

What is covered here, starting with official DOS ports of the 1990s games:
- Two demo versions of Desert Strike.
- Two demo versions of Jungle Strike.

Additionally, you may find demonstrations of:
- An unfinished demo of the unofficial Alligator Strike game.
- Megacopter: Blades of the Goddess Demo.
- A nowadays unavailable demo of Cleared Hot. Looks like early access is another option, currently.

Regarding Alligator Strike, mostly quoting from my own description on the video:
- From what I had read, KutlasS was involved in development and the helicopter selected for the game was the Kamov Ka-52 "Alligator", thus explaining the title; Additionally, the game was made with Construct 2. Discussion of the game used to take place in Russian-speaking Construct 2 community forums during development, and at least a bit later.
- The demo seemed to have an initial release near the end of November 2015, followed by v1.1 about a week later (in early December 2015) that introduced a Linux binary. Finally, 1.2 was released in mid-January 2016.

Now, on to the Jungle Strike demos. As written earlier, both cover the game's 4th level, albeit during day time.

Writing about the one described as a January 1995 demo first:
- It lets you complete all missions. It includes a full-motion video. Apparently, if fully played back before showing the menu, and/or navigating through the menu a bit (not entirely sure about this), there are chances the game will crash upon trying to start the campaign - maybe due to a failed attempt to play another video? Otherwise, it gets into the game immediately, albeit still possibly trying to open a video file as a guess of mine.
- Regarding the included video, it seems to be a Gremlin Digital Video file. I've found a Windows player written by Antony (Tony) Crowther, along with some information: https://www.gremlina...player-windows/ https://wiki.multime...n_Digital_Video

As for the other Jungle Strike demo version:
- It halts the campaign upon completing mission 4. You may try to go through the rest before completing that mission, albeit I currently recall it being impossible to mark any of missions 5-7 as completed. You also won't gain the usual advantage for trying to complete mission 7. This demo seems to precede the inclusion of any full-motion video. It actually wasn't that clear to me if this demo is a later or earlier version, initially assuming a later April 1995 one from timestamps on a "101 Only the Best Games 3" CD. However, based on contents appearing to come from "PC Gamer Vol. 2 No. 4", the last guess is rather December 1994.

Next, the Desert Strike demos. As said earlier, both demos use external files, instead of single .DAT files. The demos look like early prototypes, given differences in (digitized) sound effect playback and the first campaign appearing to not be fully implemented or accessible. For the two demos, you may play for some time, until gameplay ends automatically.

Regarding what I referred to as the July 1994 demo:
- It has missions 1-2 implemented for most, but mission 2 won't be marked as completed. Missions 3-5 are listed without details, and I don't know if the details may be exposed.
- Quoting from my video description for most, it may be noticed that digitized sound effects play faster than usual in the July 1994 demo. These are Creative Voice (.VOC) files, consisting of a single sound data block (plus a 1-byte terminator) per file. Here's a list of these files: CHAINGUN, EXPLO1, EXPLO2, EXPLO3, HELFIRE, HELIBANG, HYDRA, MISSION, RIFLE, WINCH.
- The sound data block is configured with a rate value of 197 (C5h in hex). Assuming the formula 256-(1000000/rate) with truncating division, it should match the sampling rates of 16950-17241Hz. That said, it was apparently the case the sounds were really meant to be played at a rate of 8000Hz (or close enough).
- That seemed to be fixed in later versions by changing the code to ignore the embedded rate and assume a rate of about 8000Hz; The sound files themselves had not changed at all in these versions. For instance, you may use the unpacker utility from an OpenStrike git repository in order to extract the contents of .DAT files from demo versions of Jungle Strike; These include the exact same digitized sounds.
- By the way, this version lets you use the mouse in the menus, matching an Amiga port.
- On a side-note the executable might have code from which the overscan border color may be changed, but it's not clear to me if such code may lead to a clear visible difference on vintage hardware, outside of instances like fatal errors.

Concerning the earlier demo, assuming to come from June 1994, I may quote from the matching video description again:
- Multiple features are missing from the map. For instance, I couldn't find people to bring into the chopper, and the first mission is the sole one that may be properly completed.
- Compared to later revisions, this one had less digitized sounds implemented, hence making greater use of Ad Lib sound effects. Existing digitized sounds are different from the DOS ports' usual ones.
- There appears to be a dependency on a Sound Blaster or compatible card. The familiar menu is not implemented, so there isn't a clear way of selecting sound card. It is still possible to change input device, with this version appearing to have limited mouse support.

I'll finish with the newer games from the last two years, Megacopter: Blades of the Goddess and Cleared Hot.
- These are clearly newer implementations of the familiar idea. Judging from the demos, the two games different from each other in terms of visual design. They differ from the 1990s games via the way texts and prompts are shown. Cleared Hot also made use of voice recordings. Megacopter starts with a tutorial, while Cleared Hot's first mission looks like another way to start. What is clearly expected to differ from the 1990s games is the experience of controlling each of the choppers. You may check settings for user input configuration.