Operation Wolf

Operation Wolf is a rail-shooter arcade released by Taito in 1987. It was ported to many home platforms, including Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, MSX, Atari ST, Amiga, and more.

Roy Adams, a Special Forces Operative soldier, is entrusted with a critical mission: to rescue five hostages held in enemy territory. To do this, he must infiltrate, interrogate, and find the concentration camp where the innocents are being held. But let's be honest, none of this really matters to you, does it? You are only here to shoot bad guys. Welcome to Operation Wolf.

The game was developed and published by Taito in 1987. Making its first appearance in the arcades, it received several ports in which there were some poorly optimized ones, like Atari's, and others very well achieved, like the Amiga conversion.

Although the game is intended initially to be played with an optical controller, it is perfectly adapted to the use of a mouse in several ports. Each of the six levels has different objectives, but all of them feel like an excuse for people not to get bored with the real goal: to mercilessly kill all the enemies. The Japanese designer of the game was a big fan of action movies and that he was inspired by Rambo and Commando for Operation Wolf, it is straightforward to understand the nature of the game.

On the other hand, the title has fascinating mechanics where not everything is "haha, the weapon goes pew pew." Each mission affects the rest. For example, completing the first level reduces the number of enemies killed in the remaining stages. There are also several different examples of this, which include healings, extra ammunition, etc. Besides, you can get the game over screen in a lot of different ways. Apart from receiving a lot of damage, the character can run out of bullets and get kidnapped, not saving the hostages from the camps or not covering them in the final mission. Depending on how many of them can escape, a different dialogue will be activated with the president, which can vary from anger to total satisfaction.

The audiovisual section is very well achieved in general, but there is not much to highlight. The colors of the original arcade are very striking and extravagant, and the faces of the enemies quite realistic, while in all its ports, the quality drops very strongly. As I mentioned before and along with the FM town conversion, which was also excellent, the Amiga had one of the most faithful ports to the original source. With a very adequate sound and music, the only significant change is that it has lower brightness and saturation than the arcade or FM, not that it is something terrible, just different.

In short, Operation Wolf is not a game to which you are going to dedicate 300 hours of gameplay or remember its history two months after having beaten it, but it has well earned its title as a cult game. The entry even managed to hold 3 sequels, which were not up to the original but have their own charms. The most important thing of all and the real reason you should play it is that it does its job: it's fun. With all that said, what are you waiting for? Set up your mouse pad, and let's get the killing started.