Line of Fire Longplay (Arcade) [4K]

Game Info
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Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega
Year of Release: 1989

Game Review & Impressions
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Sega's answer to Operation Thunderbolt, I never actually saw Line of Fire in any of the arcades I visited back then, but adverts for the home conversions were plastered throughout the C64 and Amiga magazines I bought.

There's really nothing complicated about this: shoot absolutely everything before it can shoot you you. Because you're in control of a vehicle-mounted machinegun there's no ammo to worry about, you can spray the screen as liberally as you like, but the key to success is knowing where enemies are going to pop and and hose them down before they can inflict too much damage.

This is actually where LoF differs to other games. You will take damage because there's simply far too many enemies not to, so the game becomes about minimising it, and taking full advantage of med packs when they appear. Shooting these boxes restore a reasonable portion of your health, and there are even cargo planes which drop them when shot; sometimes it's better to focus on shooting the plane and harvesting kits and ignoring the bad guys, since you may end up with net positive health.

Visually, Sega's sprite scaling tech is in full effect. The game uses the same X Board hardware which powered After Burner, with smooth scrolling and gigantic sprites. Multiple sprites are stacked and offset to give the illusion of parallax, such as the chinook helicopter, which is really quite a convincing 3D effect for the time.

Overall, Line of Fire is pretty good fun. I don't think it's as iconic as Operation Wolf, but it has Sega's trademark production values and fancy visuals, so definitely give the game a shot.

Video Notes
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