Article Type: Review
Article Date: June 19, 2001
History Revisited?
 |
| Box Art |
Arcade games cannot be held to the same standards as serious sims or wargames. WizardWork's Beachhead 2000 can’t be compared to the Omaha Beach scenarios of Talonsoft's West Front. Arcade games are exercises in the senses and reflexes. They excite the visceral organs and stimulate glands. Thinking beyond the minimum for eye-hand coordination can actually be detrimental to play. However, when an arcade game puts on a garb of history, the bar is raised a bit. Infogames gives us an arcade trip to the “Day of Infamy” with Pearl Harbor: Defend the Fleet. The question immediately emerges if an arcade game can do justice to one of the defining points of the Twentieth Century.“Thinking beyond the minimum for eye-hand coordination can actually be detrimental to play.”
Plot & Gameplay
The player is a gunner of what looks like a twin 40-mm mount on the bow of a generic warship in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Ah, but this isn’t just any gun; it starts out firing both 50 cal. and 20 mm ammunition. As the game progresses, ammunition types are added with, 40 mm ammunition, 3-inch shells, Gatling guns and, finally, rockets. A radar screen is added showing a 360-degree area around the mount and little dots for enemy and friendly craft, complete with different colors. The gun is aimed and fired with the mouse using a ring reticule. A counter displays available ammo of each type but the magazine never runs dry; the player is just penalized points for reloading. Swiveling and elevating is done at incredible speed so nimble Zeros can be tracked like crows. Deflection is necessary but the Japanese are very accommodating by heading straight at you. If scoring seems hard at first, don’t gripe; your weaponry is about twenty years ahead of its time.
 |
The calm Battleship Row just before the attack.  |
 |
| The first wave of attackers arrive |
The fleet you must defend consists of eight capital ships berthed on and around Battleship Row. The game is over when you’ve fended off twenty waves of attackers or when all eight ships, including yours, have been sunk. The other ships’ gunners are fairly good so you’re not alone. Henderson Field ahistorically launches fighters, P-40s and Wildcats, to help you also but they tend to just get in your way. A supply boat, an equally ahistorical Landing Craft Infantry, delivers ammunition. This craft just chugs along and is not touched by strafing enemy aircraft. Actually, you don’t need much help from any of these friends because the enemy doesn’t target you personally until Wave 17.
 |
| The USS Arizona is the first ship to go down |
 |
| A Kate meets it fate |
 |
| A midget sub sneaks not-so-stealthily around the harbor |
The attackers are primarily two versions each of Zero fighters, Val bombers and Kate torpedo planes. These aircraft circle around in fancy but predictable patterns, The bombers are incredibly slow even in dives but the Zeros behave according to legend and Hollywood. When hit, the planes smoke and flame but this never affects their performance. They never roll, have parts fall off, fly away or crash. They just keep flying until destroyed, little fireflys speeding over the waves. Their end is indeed a whimper, not a bang. They don’t explode; they just – poof! – disappear into thin air.
 |
| The mysterious scoring screen doesn’t show much |
Infogames refuses to let reality stand in the way of funky ideas. Midget subs appear so that you too can be the first kid on your block to flame and then sink a submarine with a .50 cal. Left alone, these vessels, sailing on the surface for some reason, will torpedo a ship. The final grain of salty hilarity is the introduction of the Ohka suicide bomber, fully three years before its production.
The purpose of the game is to get points by shooting down aircraft. The scoring screen that appears after you’ve annihilated every wave shows your percentage accuracy, “health” (the damage taken by your ship) and bonus points. How these bonuses are obtained and how the other factors figure into the game are never explained in the miniscule manual or Readme file. Better scoring information can be found on any pinball machine.
Graphics
Arcade games should compensate for their relative mindlessness with graphics and sounds. Pearl Harbor: Defend the Fleet fails in this. Graphics are bland and sound overly simple. The one exception to the bad graphics is the Japanese aircraft. These planes are modeled fairly well in comparison to other units, marred primarily by the black marigold passing as prop spin. Bomb drops and torpedo runs also work fairly well.“The one exception to the bad graphics is the Japanese aircraft.”
American ship graphics are terrible. Given the distinctive superstructure of pre-war American vessels, designers should have had a field day with the different ships. Instead, they produced a vague, generic set of outlines that could be anything from an Iowa-class battleship to an Aegis cruiser. The superstructure of your own ship is reminiscent of the Arleigh Burke. Other than a few thin wisps of smoke, the battle area remains a peaceful scene in Hawaii. No towering flames and columns of thick smoke, no oil slicks on the water, no life rafts, small crafts or debris of any kind; the scene is as placid as a postcard.
Sound
Sound should be immersive. In this product, it’s the opposite. The main sound is your own gun, changing tone with every ammunition type but silent on traverse and elevation. The damage to your own ship is silent with no visual jolts either. The sounds of enemy planes, attacks and explosions are so faint as to be inconsequential. The cacophony of battle is missing. What is there in spades are constant voice-overs, yammering out vapid and distracting comments. “They’re going for the battleships!” (And here I thought they wanted a refund from Lulu.) “It looks like we’re at war now!” (What was your first clue?) If they couldn’t link the voice-overs with play events, the designers should have given us believable background noises like klaxons and the sound of shipmates doing their jobs.
Conclusion
The play and mechanics of this game would be mediocre in any setting; Zaxxon was much more fun seventeen years ago. The fact that Infogames chose to use a well-known historical setting for a game with no relation to the event shows a marketing strategy as crass as it is stupid.“The fact that Infogames chose to use a well-known historical setting for a game with no relation to the event shows a marketing strategy as crass as it is stupid.”
They had to know that the myriad of historical inaccuracies would bring down the wrath of reviewers. However, given the release of the "Pearl Harbor" movie, they must have figured that any advertising would bring attention to their paltry project. A good arcade game of Pearl Harbor could be done. Infogames simply decided not to go to the effort of constructing an intelligent plot and game play. Pearl Harbor – Defend the Fleet is not only a bad game but an insult to all gamers everywhere.
