Corsair

History: rev.2857.633.85b

“We can’t have those commie Reds beating us at video games. It’s just…un-American!,” fumed President Kennedy.

“But, sir,” countered Secretary Rusk, “it’s 1961. Video games as a consumer commodity haven’t been invented yet.”

“One day they will be, and, when they are, we will be ready!,” Kennedy proclaimed.

And thus was formed the National Electronic Gaming Administration, tasked with finding the best of the best and putting them through rigorous training to ensure American video game dominance.

NEGA became something of an embarrassment, as it turned out the Russians didn’t even invent video games of their own until 1985, but regularly crushed the US in the under-funded field of chess.

Corsair is a reasonably well presented old-school single screen space shooter with a few nice flourishes. It can be played in Corsair mode, where you control the tiny wee ships buzzing about, or in Decimator mode, where you control the large ship in the center.

In Decimator mode, the dreadnought doesn’t move far enough or fast enough to dodge shots from the Corsair fleet, which makes the ability to shift it about seem pointless. When you take control of a gun turret you can’t rotate quickly enough or fire precisely enough to directly hit any of the zippy Corsair ships. The best you can hope for is to sort of herd a ship into gunfire from one of the other three turrets — which all seem to be doing a better job destroying enemy ships than you. There is no indication of how close you are to destroying the Corsair fleet, aside from a particular color failing to reappear, which means that wing is destroyed.

In Corsair mode, your ship moves too quickly in too small of an area while being bombarded by too many bullets placed too accurately. Even exclusively using the strafe controls (as trying to use the Asteroids style controls was hopeless) I could only survive for mere seconds. Again, there is no good indication of how close your fighter wing is to being decimated, though you do get a 50% and a 75% warning. The other wings are on autopilot and will assuredly outperform you.

Is it even possible to destroy a Decimator inside a stage’s time limit? I have no idea. The CPU Corsairs never came close when I played Decimator mode, and I certainly never came within a mile in Corsair mode.

Either mode is likely marginally more entertaining with four players, but anyone attempting to play this game needs to be a NEGA alumnus.

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&#038;playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:b05d9662-e9b1-4da3-99ee-416e65ba4f74&#038;showPlaylist=true&#038;from=msnvideo" target="_new" title="Corsair">Video: Corsair</a>

Get space-balled for 400 Points.

This title was 400 Points at the time of writing this review but has since been reduced to 240 Points.