LHX Attack Chopper

Sega console exclusive

LHX: Attack Chopper is a helicopter simulation with a strong arcade focus. You can freely choose which missions to fly first, and which helicopter to fly in a given mission. There are a total of four helicopters: Apache, Blackhawk, Osprey and LHX. With this fine selection of death machines you will engage countless enemy targets in Libya, East Germany and Vietnam throughout the game.

Released: 1990
Platforms: MS-DOS Sega Genesis
Genres: Simulation Vehicle simulation
Developers: Electronic Arts
Publishers: Electronic Arts
Modes: Single-player
Perspective: First person
Themes: Action Warfare
Country: United States
Languages: English

About

LHX Attack Chopper is a combat helicopter simulation game published by Electronic Arts in 1990. Development was led by Brent Iverson, who later designed Chuck Yeager's Air Combat. The game was released for MS-DOS and ported to the Mega Drive/Genesis.

LHX is acronym from Light Helicopter Experimental.

Keywords

modern warfare
cold war
helicopter
flight simulator
flight
modern military

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

In addition to the LHX prototype scout-attack helicopter, the game includes two flyable US Army helicopters – the AH-64A Apache and UH-60 Blackhawk – and (as of 1990) a prototype MV-22 Osprey (which can actually switch between helicopter and airplane control modes), any of which may be deployed against Soviet-made ground and air military equipment in the three war theaters of Libya, Vietnam and Germany. Allied units are also available, but they do not actively join the fight, nor do the opposing units usually fire upon allied equipment, apart from specific escort missions where a B-2 bomber or a couple of UH-60 helicopters tasked with CSAR will enter into enemy air space. All missile-equipped units (both ground and air) have a limited number of shots, often matching the number of ready-to-fire missiles available in the real system. Land units do not move, but air units do.

The player can play any campaign or mission in any preferred order, facing five different complexity levels, which will improve the enemy's situation awareness, time of reaction and sheer number and quality of the fielded forces. Every completed mission will not affect the other missions or the campaign as a whole, and the player can run the same mission again regardless of its previous result. At the end of every mission, the player receives a mission debriefing describing the consequences of the success or failure, and a point counter will change depending on whether the primary target is completed, whether the pilot landed at an allied airfield and not just in friendly territory, and to a smaller extent on the number of other enemy forces destroyed in the process of reaching and returning from the target area.

Reception

A 1992 Computer Gaming World survey of wargames with modern settings gave the game two and a half stars out of five, stating that it had a "highly unrealistic flight model". A 1994 survey gave it two stars, stating that "it enjoyed more popular success than I thought it deserved".

In 1994, PC Gamer US named LHX Attack Chopper the 29th best computer game ever. The editors wrote that "what the game lacks in graphic polish it more than makes up for with fast action".