PHM Pegasus (1987)

Definitely the amount of action you want on a title screen.

Name:PHM Pegasus
Number:249
Year:1987
Publisher:Electronic Arts
Developer:Lucasfilm Games
Genre:Naval Simulation
Difficulty:4/5
Time:2 hours
Won:No (111W/80L)

Naval games haven't really had a good track record so far. I've covered a few submarine titles in the early days, but those were bad. Occasionally, some have popped up on my list, but inevitably turned out to be...well, crap and I tossed them in the trash without further consideration.

When you get down to it, it's kind of odd, because sea games should be very easy to depict, since there's very little to depict. Yet, when I look at games that I would consider things I would play on my own, without the consideration of this blog, the earliest is Red Storm Rising, and then it's all late '90s and '00s titles.

Side note, despite the DOS version coming with EGA graphics, in order to use them, you need to type HF E as you enter. Or HF EGA, it doesn't actually matter. There are two manuals floating around, a plaintext one for the DOS version and one for a C64 multi-pak. (There is a proper pdf for DOS, but its harder to find) You need one with actual pictures, because the game uses pictures of ships from the manual for manual protection. These actually don't match up all that well with the pixelated images, which is fun and not at all an incredibly annoying thing to have to work around.

PHM Pegasus is about the first Pegasus-class hydrofoil...the Pegasus. Of which six existed, before the class was retired thanks to the high cost of maintaining it. See, hydrofoils use foils to fly over water, allowing enhanced speed and maneuverability in comparison to other boats. Choppy water isn't a problem. In addition to these benefits, the Pegasus-class is also gifted with a 76mm machine gun and two Harpoon rocket launchers.

The manual opens up by explaining the real world mission of the Pegasus, counter terrorism and piracy, by a colonel in charge of the presumably fictional Terrorist Action Group, a mildly amusing name in retrospect. This is close to the actual real world mission, only missing narcotics control. Again, they were retired due to high costs. If I had to guess based off playing this, it's that those missions usually don't need the kind of firepower and speed this bad boy has. Maybe in real life this thing can't take out a battleship, but in real life it really doesn't need to.

There are 18 scenarios in the DOS version. Much like F-15 Strike Eagle and other early games which attempted to get past arcade-style endless shooting by giving the player scenarios. For a while, I wasn't sure what half these missions were without playing them, but it turns out these are from a scenario disk, which is unmentioned on the internet, and there is a manual for these.

The scenarios I attempted, in order, are:

One on One, a training scenario where you shoot the PHM Heracles. This is dictated by how fast you can press V to switch view, T to target the enemy ship, then hold down the enter key to shoot. You can change weapons with W, but here there's no point. I know this sounds like a complaint, but considering what a lot of these games tend to do to you, I'm not complaining.

Turkey Shoot, another training scenario. Learn manual aiming to shoot down helicopters. I spent an inordinate amount of time figuring out how to do this, including a section where I found out that either my imitation N64 controller either doesn't work with DOSbox or this game. Arrow keys aim, well, numpad when it isn't working on numbers. It's a bit stiff, but it works, which is more than some games from this era feel like. Holding the direction down moves it a lot more than I'd like and you don't see where you're aiming until you release the button.

There's a lot of leading against flying targets. This is okay here, where they don't shoot back, but I can imagine this getting annoying. You have to look at the little dots at the side of the target indicator at the top. Even here I feel like it takes me a bit to get the targets down.

There's not much variation in the screenshots, because, you know, naval game.

Battle Training, another training scenario, this time a proper test of skill. Take out ten ships, which come one at a time until you reach the most powerful enemy ship. In theory, since I'm not checking which ship is which in-game and the manual only lists three types of ships. This is the first scenario that feels like I'm actually playing the game instead of just training myself to actually play it, except that this is the first time chaff comes into play. There are two kinds of missiles in the game, ones that the chaff can protect against and ones you either sail away from or shoot. I never managed to shoot one. 

Graduation Exercise, the last training scenario. Take out ten ships at once. In theory, this is harder than the last one, but one I got up to speed and got things down, it was surprisingly easier. Part of it could be that now I was managing my ammo better, but a part of it is that placing it all on you at once does feel like a good way to accelerate learning of how it all works now that you actually know how it all works.

Nobody tell Churchill that it was destroyed without time travel shenanigans before.

Sink the Bismarck, which is a scenario involving you sinking the famous German battleship Bismarck. Why? You've mysteriously gone back in time. This isn't really that difficult, you just go full speed and then wait until you're within firing range. The game includes the ability to speed up time, up to 128 times normal speed. Which is I feel is a subtle admission that they've gone a bit too far in some places. The oddest part of this is two mysterious white objects in the water which charge after the boat for some reason. Torpedoes? My missiles? No idea.

The little text at the bottom is very helpful, since you might not otherwise realize it.

Splash 20, is another scenario like Graduation Exercise. Take out twenty enemy ships who are in a group of twelve and eight. In theory, the manual implies that this is an endless thing, eight ships pop up whenever you clear out one group.

Missile Alley, also like Graduation Exercise, except there are just missile boats. By this point, I'm not terribly worried about dealing with missiles, chaff deals with that problem quite handily. The real problem is that there are a lot of them, and just when I thought I finished them off, there's another wave. This too, might be another situation against endless enemies.

Showing the ever trusty map you get and usually dismiss the second you start a mission.

Pegasus Vice, in comparison to past missions, this one is completely unplayable without a manual. You have to stop four drug runners from bringing "contraband" into Miami, but they're disguised as ordinary speedboats. You have to fire warning shots to get them to stop, then get up close to search them for drugs with your binoculars. Very close. You shoot any speedboat, even a smuggler, and that's bad news for you.

Terrorist Attack, this is the one following Graduation Exercise in the manual. This is where the original game starts to become real rather than training. At least seven boats attacked a seaside resort, and you have to stop them before they escape or nearby forces who are sympathetic to the terrorists. Aiding you is an Israeli Flagstaff II...which amounts to me getting two fancy missiles.

While I hate to criticize a game for trying to make something beyond a simple arcade shooter in this era, the fact is, this is a game where you're going to spend a lot of time waiting around to find enemies. Oh, sure, you can speed time up, but even at max speed and going where the game tells you to go, it can take a while to see an enemy boat. The game does warn you when something finally does happen, but it doesn't take you back to regular speed.

I took out four boats, two regular PTs and two missile boats. Whether they were all terrorists or not hardly matters. It was long, dreary, and nothing much happened. The name of the game, it seems, is to know where all the enemies are instead of just hoping to find them. Which means replaying each mission until you get it right. There are nine more missions, all of which are long hauls like this.

In order to make something like this work, you really need to have some nice visuals going on as you go from point A to B. This is not necessarily wishing this to be a flight sim, but flight sims do have it easier. Without water and a nice model of a ship, I'm looking at a lot of blue and grey pixels without much else to them. It's very dreary.

Weapons:
Despite a very limited arsenal, the four weapons felt pretty good to use. I usually don't use chaff as well as I do in these games, so despite the logical bomb of it behaving like another weapon, it actually helped me. It took a bit of getting used to the way you fire things, but it was the first time I actually felt like I in a boat in a game. 3

Enemies:
The manual lists about a dozen ships, none of which I could see the difference between outside of broad class strokes. Then again, none of them mattered outside of broad class strokes. Whether they were big or small, and whether or not missiles were headed your way. 3

Non-Enemies:
There are missions you get helicopters and have to escort convoys. I can't say how well this works, because even if I played a mission with them, I don't know the keys to get them to do anything. Those are on the command card, which doesn't appear to be available online. 0

Levels:
I appreciate the variety the game tries to put forth, even if it boils down to "arcade shooting gallery" and "long stretches of doing nothing". I know that's probably how actual naval warfare happens, and probably just as fun, but you get paid for that. This is supposed to be fun. 3

Player Agency:
Everything works, but it just doesn't quite work perfectly. There's always a nagging problem. An awkward choice of turning, stiff aiming, my inability to select specific weapons. I could do all those things, but the game just didn't quite do it how I wanted it to. 4

Interactivity:
None.

Atmosphere:
Occasional naval action with long stretches of the accurate naval experience. 1

Graphics:
I appreciate the nice graphics of the ships at the top, it distracts me from the reality that most of the game is me staring at my radar and a blue shoreline. 3

Story:
None, even if the manual gives a token plot about terrorism.

Sound/Music:
Simple blips and bloops. 1

That's 18.

As far as naval simulation games go, I would describe it as one. Which is much better than all the sub-based games I've played in the past, which I found to be unpleasant experiences. Maybe next time I return to the see, I'll get something fun. It does feel like it's just catching up to stuff that flight sims did a couple years ago, but whether that's because this is crude or just that the better flight sims are light years ahead of anything else remains to be seen.

Sadly, the big thing in naval sims won't be from Lucasarts, but the next game, the big 250, will be, Battlehawks 1942, which I hope will be quite interesting.