Everybody loves desert graves: Let's Play UN Squadron!

If you think that little robot pickup is annoying, under the next overhang should be a star pickup you can only get if you're willing to risk a shot from a big chopper or you have napalm.

So that little destroy-all-enemies weapon is pretty worthless but it's also a hint that powerups hide under those caves. The next one that shows up has a star which is, uh, an extra life or continue or something.

i love the soundtrack to this game.

I do love me some A10 action. It doesn't really matter what stage you pick as long as you get one, iMHO.

Nice - you're playing this in the order I generally do, albeit with less truck grinding.

Although you didn't say it, it's possible to take out the mini-missile launchers on the land carrier as well (you did damage to them early on in the battle), which makes things even easier. Your mission ops guy is fundamentally clueless.

I'm just following the order suggested by the people in this thread - which, for the most part, is exactly how I would play the game anyway. Score!

I learned one other thing on one of my unusable runs that I found pretty interesting. If you're down to zero fuel (which puts you permanently in danger mode), flying into the deck of the carrier won't kill you. It will damage you if you have some life left, and potentially kill you if you aren't at zero fuel, but if you're running on empty then it appears you'll be safe. The ship will shake, but you'll keep on ticking. Strange, huh?

Stars are bonus cash I believe.

Personally I don't use the A10 too often. I like choosing planes for their special weapons and using those to hit awkwardly placed enemies.

Hey folks, guess what time it is?

The stars did not align for this mission.

i didn't have a good feeling.

Mickey is quite the sadist, isn't he? Wouldn't it be funny if his so called allies betrayed him later in the game?

Tough luck, Mick. You'll get 'em next time.

That battleship does have one well-trained gun crew, however. Using the main guns to target a single aircraft is pretty crazy.

It just amazes me how complex the bullet/aircraft patterns get in this forest. Either I don't remember it as well as I thought I did, or I was much better at shmups back then than I am now. I probably would've been shot down within seconds of starting the Land Carrier stage!

I find it funny you really dislike Shin. Mickey's ability is pretty marginal too. Gates has a nice ability but it is defensive, so it becomes increasingly irrelevant the better you get.

One cute thing that one can do against the Forest Base is to intentionally fly through the core on your 2nd pass, taking damage, but getting in more hits with your weapons. It's not a sure fire way to defeat the core in two passes but it often makes the difference.

Time to smack that sub! The sub is one of the nice things about playing on normal. On the harder modes the planes get extra speed and it makes the level exponentially more frustrating.

Y'all ready for this?


Where to now, guys? We've got a CANYON and a CAVE to take care of at this point. Getting close to the end!








BONUS IMAGE:

I don't think it's good weapon design to mount a missile launcher on the bow of your submarine which can only be used by pulling a "Hunt For Red October" leap out of the water. But eh, that's Project 4 for ya.

Caves are no places for airplanes to be in. Canyons, OTOH, are fun to navigate! Go for it!

The megacrush is great as a preemptive weapon against the battleship. The second group of missile turrets is almost entirely shielded from conventional attacks by the superstructure. I see no reason not to pop the megacrush the first chance I get against them.

Voting CAVE. No one would want to play the notorious cave earlier than necessary, but if you are going to give us the option then I want to see what you have planned!

It's fun watching you play this, Mike. We play completely different, when I get to a boss, I unload every special weapon I have as soon as something destructible shows up.

Yeah - did we ever figure out what Mickey's special ability was? At the moment it seems like it's "go into danger mode for a shorter time than Shin, but a longer time than Greg."

I could never pick anyone except Greg, I'm terrible at this game despite loving it so much. Also, I vote CANYON; if I remember right the Cave has a really annoying boss that you'd probably want a different plane for.

I'm really enjoying this LP so far! I rarely dive right into video LPs, but this is U.N Squadron we're talking about here. I really like the "where'd he go?" trick with the battleship turrets. This game always makes me geek out on airplanes and remember the times when I was excited about planes and warships and so on, without that excitement tempered through actually reading about war. I also had an aviation buff for a dad, and I inherited that too. I'm no expert, but I just can't resist.

The Lovely Aircraft of U.N. Squadron

F8 Crusader (specs): An early carrier-based fighter jet. It was difficult to handle and caused many deaths, which our Mickey S. probably just considers an extra challenge. It was officially retired by the US in the 70's, but there was a variant made for the French Navy, the "F8E" featured in this game. Despite being armed with the Bullpup missile, it can not equip it in the game.

F-20 Tigershark (specs): I always foolishly picked this plane in the game because it's the Tigershark! However, it never made it to production. It's a complicated story, but the gist is that it was considered too redundant with other aircraft like the F-16. It was also involved in a poorly thought-out Cold War program designed to create an export market for lower-tier aircraft among allies of the US. In U.N Squadron, it's also pretty redundant and denies you valuable funds to pour into other planes. But it's still the Tigershark, and I love it for who it is.

F-14D Super Tomcat (specs): Also known as "The Plane From Top Gun." It was a famous workhorse of the Navy and ran missions in Desert Storm and beyond. As reflected in the game it was designed mainly for air superiority and it could use the real-life Phoenix missile as well. Disappointingly, there was never a lightning gun... that we know of.

A-10A Thunderbolt II (specs): A dedicated ground attack and close air support plane, and as amazing in reality as it is in the game. It's also the only plane in U.N. Squadron still in use by the United States, with an estimated retirement date of 2028. It's just that good. I find it kind of odd that it has such a low Vulcan cannon max level, since it's the only plane in the game that was really designed around blasting away with a giant cannon. The common joke is that it's not really a plane armed with a ridiculous gun, it's a ridiculous gun with a plane attached.

By the way, the first Thunderbolt was a World War 2 plane, and also pretty good at the ground attack role.

YF-23 (specs): A prototype by Northrop that lost a contract to Lockheed's F-22 Raptor (which lost its own war with the budget recently.) Only two were produced and they're both in museums, so for some reason the Area 88 crew either produced their own or stole one from a museum and re-armed it. There haven't really been guns designed to shoot upward since WW2, so I'm not sure where its specialty in the game came from.

F200 Efreet: Exists only in U.N. Squadron and defense contractors' dreams. It could be based somewhat on the B-1 Lancer. It looks kind of similar from the side and it would have to be at least that big to carry that many weapons, but it also reminds me of the prototype XB-70 Valkyrie.

That's some beautiful work, chargeplus. As a reward, here's something special for you all:


So it has been hypothesized that Mickey's special ability is that he gets more weapons from ammo pickups than the other pilots do. If that were the case, the description in the manual for him would be pretty much 100% wrong. Of course, given the state of localization in the early 90s, that's entirely possible! But a true scientist doesn't simply wonder; he experiments. Does the theory hold water? Let's find out!

Let's go back and visit our friend Minks one more time.



Here's the ammo pickup. Mickey currently has 38 of his bombs left let's grab it and see what happens...



78 bombs, that's 40 more than we had a moment ago! Pretty impressive haul, more so for the fact that all of Mickey's weapon reserves have been refilled by 80% of their starting values (note that the amount varies from mission to mission - the ammo refill in the DESERT is only half as generous).



That's all well and good, but how does he compare to the other pilots of UN Squadron? Let's go take our good friend Greg Gates for a spin.



All right, we're coming up to the ammo pickup. We'll just grab that and...



TEN MEASLY BOMBS?? That's it?! Holy cow, it looks like Mickey does get more ammo from one of these pickups, and not by a small margin. But maybe our Danish friend is getting the short end of the stick? Let's see if Shin can do a little better:







I guess not! It would seem that Mickey really does get the best deal when it comes to ammo pickups, by a factor of 4. It's debatable whether that's more useful as a special ability than Greg's rapid recoveries (HINT: it isn't), but combined with the fact that Mickey levels his vulcan gun up faster than Greg, I'd say he's still at least somewhat competitive.

With this bit of science tested and verified, the people can finally rest easy. Don't forget to keep the votes coming in for CANYON or CAVE - which basically boils down to "do you want to see me fail now or later?"

See you next secret mission!

I've always been a Shin man. I like the extra challenge. It keeps my skills sharpened.

CANYON

I've always thought the three pilots each had one special ability rather than 3 individual stats for 3 abilities (vulcan powerups / weapon refills / damage recovery). Does Mickey = Gates for vulcan powerups and Shin = Mickey for damage recovery?

I know that the second one isn't true - Mickey levels up somewhere between Shin and Gates. For instance, level one to two is: Shin - 2, Mickey - 3, and Greg - 4.

Edit: Oh yeah, and Canyon! Best music track in the game right there.

But Mickey is just the kindof pilot who doesn't care for "standards" and "logical settings"

I vote CAVE

A Canyon is kind of like half a Cave, so you should clearly do Canyon first to maintain the gradual progression towards Place Where Planes Just Should Not Be.

Ah yes, the duel against Battleship "Minks"...joined by special guest referee SNES and its vaunted slowdown! Glad you finally pulled off that clearly rigged fight.

I vote Canyon, because I like for LPers playing good games to have an easier time. For those playing...not-so-great games in an attempt to showcase a slice of hell, that's another story.

Nice LP/run so far!

Canyon level!

Hey Mike, can we see some of the other planes while you're at it?