Aicom corporation
Release : 1989-03-20 (¥5200)
HuCard (2 Mbits) AC89001
Shooter / Horizontal
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P47 The Freedom Fighter is an horizontal shooter and conversion of
an arcade game originally released by NMK and Jaleco in 1988.
The player takes control of an American P 47 Thunderbolt fighter
plane and fights his way over Europe
during World War II. The plane starts equipped with
a simple gun and can be upgraded in all sorts of ways by shooting
down helicopters in order to release special icons. These special
weapons range from Missiles (M), Air-to-Ground Bombs (B),
Explosion Blast (E) and Turret Shards (T). Additional
items can also be collected such as Speed Ups (S),
Extra Lives (1UP) or Continues (C).
P47 The Freedom Fighter consists of eight levels, from
ground attack stages to flying into large cloud formations or over the ocean
and taking down large battleships. P47 consists of eight levels
and is single player only.
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P 47 The Freedom Fighter was originally released in the arcades by Jaleco
in 1988 (picture on the right). The game is actually known as P-47 The Phantom Fighter in the United States and
P-47 Thunderbolt in Europe. It was
ported to countless home systems at the time and especially in Europe by Firebird, such as the Amiga (1990),
Atari ST (1990), Commodore 64 (1990), Amstrad CPC (1990),
Sinclair ZX81/Spectrum (1990) and PC (1993). The PC Engine version
tested here is fairly faithful to the original arcade game and only minor graphic
features were omitted as well as the two-simultaneous player mode.
Interestingly, Jaleco actually released a sequel called P-47 Aces in 1995 (picture on the left). The game
was only released in the arcades as far as I know and developed by Nihon Maicom Kaihatsu.
This episode is incredible and takes P-47 to a whole new level with four different pilots (and planes)
to choose from, insane weapons and jaw dropping enemy bosses.
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Click on picture to enlarge |
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Level Select:
At the title screen, wait for the ten planes to appear (picture on the right). Once they do, press II
five times and I six times. Then press Select twice. This should
activate the level select cheat (this is tricky to achieve, make sure the ten
planes have started appearing, not before and not after, and the game also doesn't give you any
sign that the cheat was properly entered). Once done, press the following button
combination to start from any level in the game:
Level 2 - Hold I and press Run.
Level 3 - Hold II and press Run.
Level 4 - Hold I and II, and press Run.
Level 5 - Hold Select and press Run.
Level 6 - Hold I and Select, and press Run.
Level 7 - Hold II and Select, and press Run.
Level 8 - Hold I, II and Select, and press Run.
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LK
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Add your Pov here !
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The first time I played P 47, I wasn't really impressed - the
action is fairly slow and average overall. But, to be honest, the original arcade
game suffered from similar issues. The game is not bad, really, if features
detailed graphics, responsive controls, a fairly
simple power-up system (the weapons are not really spectacular nor remarkable)
and the levels and enemies are fairly varied, although kind of repetitive.
The difficulty is well balanced and the game does become really busy and manic in later stages and enemy bullets
will cover the screen with ease. Frankly, I have a really hard time rating this game,
P47 just delivers what the first couple of levels deliver. No WOW-moments here. Don't
expect it to climax into something different, it is just a straight-forward
World War II horizontal shooter featuring waves and waves of enemy planes and tanks,
all looking alike, and some interesting (although not surprising) bosses.
All in all, P47 is not bad and delivers what it is supposed to,
but I would only advice you to hunt it down if you find it cheap.
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