Top Gun is Konami’s 1987 NES adaptation of the hit film, putting you in the cockpit of an F-14 Tomcat across four escalating missions: clearing out a squadron of enemy MiGs, defending an aircraft carrier, striking a heavily armed fortress, and finishing with a night raid on a space shuttle launch pad. Rather than a straightforward shooter, the challenge is split between dogfighting and the notoriously unforgiving tasks of mid-air refueling and carrier landing that bookend every mission.
How to Play
Move the Tomcat with the arrow keys — oddly, Up noses the plane down and Down pulls it up, which trips up most first-time pilots. Z fires the unlimited-ammo machine gun and X launches one of your limited missiles at enemy aircraft. From mission 2 onward you must refuel mid-air by lining up behind a tanker’s drogue, and every mission ends with a carrier landing where an on-screen radar tells you to speed up, slow down, or adjust left or right until your altitude and speed both fall inside a narrow safe window. There are no continues — lose three planes and it’s game over.
Tips
- On landing approach, react with small taps rather than big corrections — you want your altitude near 200 and speed near 288 as you cross the carrier deck, and overcorrecting is the most common way to crash.
- Missiles are limited, so save them for MiGs that are hard to line up with the machine gun; unlimited ammo alone can clear most enemies if you stay on their tail.
- Refueling isn’t optional past the first mission — top off as soon as the tanker appears rather than waiting until your fuel runs low.
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