Carrier Air Wing (video game)

This article is about the game. For the naval unit, see Carrier Air Wing.

Carrier Air Wing
Developer(s)	Capcom
Publisher(s)	Capcom
Designer(s)	Noritaka Funamizu
Composer(s)	Manami Matsumae
Platforms	Arcade
Release date(s)	October 1990
Genre(s)	Scrolling shooter
Mode(s)	2
Cabinet	Upright
Arcade system	CPS-1
Display	Raster 384 x 224 pixels (Horizontal), 4096 colors

Carrier Air Wing, released in Japan as U.S. Navy (ユー・エス・ネイビー, Yū Esu Neibī), is a 1990 side-scrolling shooting game released for the CP System arcade hardware by Capcom. It is the spiritual sequel to U.N. Squadron, released during the previous year. As with the original, players chose any one of three different jet fighters and battle their way through ten enemy-packed stages. Other ideas carried over from U.N. Squadron include the shop, which allows players to buy weapon and shield upgrades for their jet fighter between stages, and the energy bar, which is replaced by a "fuel bar" which starts full at the start of each stage and decreases as time passes with some fuel lost each time the plane is damaged.

Plot

During the decade of the nineties, many things in the world have changed. Growing cooperation between old rivals and friendships between the superpowers of the globe were examples of such occurring changes in political and economical scenarios of the world, but this fragile peace was not to last for long: in the year 1997, the fictional Middle Eastern country "Rabu" built several weapons of mass destruction, such as ICBM's, tactical nuclear bombs, and even a satellite-based tactical laser weapon, able to strike anywhere in the world.

With such weaponry in hand and benefiting from several terrorists over the world, Rabu was ready to declare war on mankind and aspire to their dream of global conquest.

An emergency call arrives to the U.S. government when, in 1999, Rabu strikes Tokyo, Japan with its extensive weaponry. The Americans decide to fight back against Rabu, and the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) slips out to sea carrying three of the finest Navy fighter pilots in the world: Rick Ford, Mark Olson, and James Roy, launching them on a campaign to remove the threat of Rabu and bring peace and freedom back to the world.

The greatest air war in human history is about to begin...

Flyable aircraft

Gameplay of Carrier Air Wing

• F-14 Tomcat – Piloted by New York-born Rick Ford, who placed first in his class at the Navy TOPGUN fighter combat school. Ford is virtually unmatchable in air-to-air combat. His F-14 is an unparalleled air superiority fighter of the Navy, which can be armed with devastating AIM-54 Phoenix long-range AA missiles, but its ground attacking capability is somewhat limited.
• F/A-18 Hornet – Piloted by James Roy, from Louisiana. Roy is a member of the USN Blue Angels air acrobatic team whose adroit handling of a plane gives him an advantage against both air and ground foes. The F/A-18 is the most balanced aircraft in the game, being able to launch Standard Missiles in a five-shot salvo, is capable to handle both air and ground sorties with equal efficiency.
• A-6E Intruder – Piloted by Mark Olson, a former USN squad leader from Michigan. Olson is known for being able to drop a bomb anywhere under any condition. The A-6E Intruder is a well-armed ground attack aircraft, which, in some missions, is authorized to carry tactical nukes. However, It is not well suited for air-to-air dogfight.

Trivia

• Enemy stealth aircraft (ones that resembles B-2s and F-117s) cannot be tracked by the player's homing AA missile.
• Unlike their real-life radiation-seeking counterparts, Shrike and Standard Missiles fire as unguided salvos in the game, just like air-launched rockets normally do.
• The player-controlled aircraft seems to have afterburners enabled all the time, however, in real life, doing this will deplete fuel rather quickly.
• Unlike the prequel, there was no home version of this game, neither for the Super NES, nor for the Capcom arcade game compilations in the 2000s.
• This is one of the few arcade side-scrolling shooters released by Capcom, the last of them being Progear (2001).
• The current MAME World Record Holder confirmed by Twin Galaxies is Richard Piper with a high score of 2,202,440 in March 2009.
• The man who gives the player a brief mission resembles Sean Connery.
• many enemies in the game are models of airplanes former Soviet Union as the Sukhoi Su 27 Flanker or the Tupolev Tu 160 Blackjack