Firestorm: ThunderHawk 2

Firestorm: Thunderhawk 2 is a combat flight simulator in which the player pilots a fictional attack helicopter, the AH-73M, through a series of missions around the world. The game consists of eight campaigns, taking place in locations such as the Panama Canal, South America, and the South China Sea. While the player can choose a campaign in any order, missions must be completed chronologically. The AH-73M is controlled by turning, altering altitudes, and accelerating or decelerating the helicopter.

The player can choose to view the action from various viewpoints, including views from outside the helicopter or from within a cockpit. The AH-73M is armed with a variety of weapons, which includes a chain gun, missiles, rockets, and cluster bombs. Most of the weapons, except for a chain gun, uses a limited supply of ammunition. It is possible for the player to heavily customise the weaponry on their AH-73M before the beginning of each mission.

Firestorm: Thunderhawk 2 was created by the British studio Core Design, as a sequel to the original Thunderhawk. Sarah Avory served as a lead programmer, while Martin Iveson handled the game's music and sound effects. The game was developed simultaneously for the PC, Saturn, and PlayStation, with the PC as the lead platform. According to Avory, the game took very little time to develop since it reused the game engine from Thunderhawk; it took only one month to create a playable version for the PC, and just a few days to port this early version over to both the PlayStation and Saturn.

With this accomplished, the team set about adding additional missions, troops, and bug fixes, working towards a release date of 4 December 1995 for all three versions. In Japan, the Sega Saturn version of Thunderhawk 2 was released by Victor Entertainment on 23 February 1996, followed by the PlayStation version on 24 May. An Atari Jaguar CD port was planned but never released.

The PlayStation and Sega Saturn versions received mostly positive reviews. Common subjects of praise included the fun of destroying enemies and scenery, the large number of missions, and the use of contemporary real world scenarios and weaponry. Critics generally complimented the heavily detailed and realistic graphics, but reprimanded the draw distance problems, particularly the considerable pop-up. However, even the game's sternest critics concluded it to be far better than contemporary flight simulators, such as Wing Arms and Black Fire. In 1996, GamesMaster ranked the game 9th on their "The GamesMaster Saturn Top 10".