Operation Wolf
Banana Development ported Taito's Operation Wolf light-gun coinop of 1987 to IBM PC MS-DOS in 1989.
Operation Wolf is a first-person auto-scrolling and sprite-animated shoot 'em up.
The PC version of Operation Wolf was programmed by William Rieder. PC Operation Wolf stands as a high-quality port and the best home-computer version of Operation Wolf.
The object of Operation Wolf is to kill terrorists and destroy enemy vehicles, gunboats and gunships while rescuing hostages, of which there are four types. Players must be careful not to shoot medics or hostages as they make their escapes under a hail of gunfire.
Animated enemy sprites move onto the auto-scrolling playfield from the left, right and top of the screen. The enemy sprites move on and fire from planes of playfield depth that range from close-quarters to distant. Players move the crosshairs over the playfield, targeting and firing at enemy units and projectiles, such as mid-air knives and grenades that fly towards players. Ammo must be conserved, but the only way to conserve health is to kill or be killed since there is no cover and players cannot adjust their position, yet enemies can move about, roll, crouch and shoot from cover.
Power-ups and ammo are collected on the playfield by shooting them. Collectables include 30-bullet magazine, rocket grenade, dynamite bomb, health-restore potions and the super machinegun, which grants 10 seconds of rapid and free firing.
There are six stages in Operation Wolf and two bosses:
- Communication Setup
- Jungle
- Village (General boss)
- Powder Magazine
- Concentration Camp
- Airport (gunship boss)
All in all, players are tasked with destroying 450 enemy units.
Operation Wolf tracks player ability and displays:
- Bullet hit-rate percentage
- Shots fired
- Total hits
- Enemy clear-rate percentage
- Total enemies
- Enemies cleared
Operation Wolf supports keyboard, joystick or mouse control of the on-screen cursor-crosshairs.
Operation Wolf displays in 16-color VGA 320x200, 16-color 320x200 MCGA, 16-color 320x200 EGA, 16-color 320x200 TGA or monochrome Hercules 720x350. Operation Wolf also supports CGA palette switching: four CGA palettes can be switched between via the F4-key.
The active drawspace of the 16-color version is 233x200.
Operation Wolf requires an IBM PC, XT, AT, PS/2 or Tandy 1000 808x or i80x86 CPU. Depending on graphics mode, Operation Wolf requires between 405-530 kbytes of free conventional RAM.
Operation Wolf was distributed on 1x 3.5" 720kB DD diskette or 2x 5.25" 360kB floppy disks and extracts and installs to hard disk drive via install c:. The install size is 700 kbytes and consists of 30 files.
Audio-wise, Operation Wolf supports IBM Sound, AdLib, CMS and Tandy 3-channel audio.
Operation Wolf Amiga 1988
Taito's Operation Wolf light-gun coinop of 1987 was ported to Atari ST and Amiga by Ocean France in 1988. The Amiga version of Operation Wolf displays in 16-color 320x200, but has an active drawspace of 240x200.
The Amiga verion of Operation Wolf was programmed by Christophe Gomez. Marc Djan converted the graphics, Jean Baudlot converted the music, and Patrick Sigwalt converted the sound effects.
Amiga Operation Wolf was distributed on 2x 3.5" 880kB DD diskettes. It was not installable to hard disk drive.
Operation Thunderbolt Amiga 1989
Taito's 1988 sequel Operation Thunderbolt was subsequently ported to ST/Amiga by Ocean Software of the U.K. in 1989. The Amiga version of Operation Thunderbolt displays in 32-color 320x200 whereas the ST version displays in 16-color 320x200. However, Amiga Operation Thunderbolt has an active drawspace of 288x144.
Operation Thunderbolt combines "3D" sprite-scaling stages with horizontally-scrolling stages.
The Amiga version of Operation Thunderbolt was programmed by John Brandwood; graphics drawn by Robert Hemphill; audio composed by Jonathan Dunn.
Operation Thunderbolt allows for 2-player simultaneous action.
Amiga Operation Thunderbolt was distributed on 2x 3.5" 880kB DD diskettes. It was not installable to hard disk drive.
Operation Wolf Commodore 64 1988
Colin Porch of Ocean Software ported Taito's Operation Wolf coinop of 1987 to the Commodore 64 in 1988.
This is a solid port with good gameplay, audio-visuals and presentation.
C64 Operation Wolf graphics were drawn by Steve Wahid, and its audio was composed by Jonathan Dunn.
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