Desert Strike

A helicopter, a parched desert and missions you must not return from empty-handed. Desert Strike arrived on the Atari Lynx in 1993 as a portable version of the isometric military action game that originally made its name on the Mega Drive and caught the era's wave of interest in modern military conflict.

You take a seat in the cockpit of a combat helicopter and from an isometric view carry out a series of military tasks deep in enemy territory. You destroy targets, rescue allies and progress through missions that combine action with a pinch of tactical thinking. The game isn't about mindless shooting: you constantly have to watch your fuel and ammunition and return for supplies, or the desert will swallow you before the enemy does.

This very resource management set Desert Strike apart from ordinary shooters. It created a tension where you had to weigh every shot and every detour, because arriving with an empty tank meant the end. This layer of thinking gave the action depth and forced players to behave more like a prudent commander than a fearless Rambo.

Military themes were very popular in the early 1990s, among other reasons in the echoes of the era's conflicts, and EA's Strike series recorded a notable success at the time. The Lynx version brings this concept into your pocket as a decent portable conversion that preserves the core of the experience, though on a smaller screen it loses a little of the original presentation's grandeur.

For console owners it was a welcome expansion of the genre offering with something action-tactical that stood apart from simple arcades. Desert Strike on the Lynx isn't the most famous version of this game, but it represents an interesting piece of the era's wave of military games in a form you could take anywhere with you.

Why play: For isometric helicopter action with tactical management of fuel and ammunition, a portable portion of military tension from the early nineties.