Operation Wolf
Operation Wolf is a one-player shooter arcade game made by Taito in 1987. It spawned three sequels: Operation Thunderbolt (1988), Operation Wolf 3 (1994) and Operation Tiger (1998).
Description
The object of the game is to rescue the five hostages in the concentration camp. The game is divided into six stages: Communication Setup, Jungle, Village, Powder Magazine, Concentration Camp, and Airport. Completion of each stage advances the story. For example, upon completing the Jungle stage, an enemy leader is interrogated and the location of the enemy's concentration camp is found. This was one of the first shooter games to feature a storyline, and it had some similarities to real special operations missions.
The objectives were as follows:
- Communications - Destroy the enemy communications unit in order to isolate them. Until this stage is completed, the number of enemies in all the other stages goes up by 5 each time you finish a stage. (Since this is the first stage in all but the Japanese versions, this effect was rarely seen outside of Japan.)
- Jungle - Capture the squad leader and learn of the concentration camp's location. You are to repel the ambush, but avoid collateral damage as civilians are in the jungle as well. The climax of the stage on the NES version and several other ports involves an enemy soldier holding a woman hostage by threatening to shoot her. Until this stage is completed, you cannot select the Concentration camp stage.
- Village - Enemy forces are in control of a village that is presumably unsympathetic to what they are doing. Your mission is to attack the enemy forces and cause them to retreat from occupying the village. Successfully completing the stage means the villagers perform medical treatment on you and replenish your health as a reward. If this stage is not completed, the Airport stage will start with two extra tanks.
- Ammunition dump - The mission is to destroy the ammunition dump in order to starve the enemy of firepower (and steal some for you). You do so at the end of the stage, but not before consficating grenades and clips of ammunition for yourself. If this stage is not completed, the Airport stage will start with two extra helicopters.
- Concentration camp - Eliminate the enemy forces guarding the camp in order to permit the hostages to escape. In addition to being careful to not shoot the hostages, you must also be careful not to destroy enemy vehicles too close to the hostages, as the shrapnel could also kill the hostages. You can still finish the level after killing all the hostages, but the game then ends (if continue is enabled on the machine, continuing triggers a strange bug where the level instantly finishes, and another game over occurs -- but the second continue behaves normally). Until this stage is completed, you cannot select the Airport stage.
- Airport - You must get the hostages (and yourself) to successfully escape. As in the previous stage, the hostages cross the screen and you must see to their safety. The stage is completed by boarding an airplane which returns you to the United States. A final, heavily armed helicopter will try to shoot the plane down after all other hostiles are terminated and must be destroyed to finish the stage.
The game is controlled with a positional gun controller attached to the cabinet, with force feedback to simulate recoil. In order to complete each stage, the player must shoot as many soldiers, tanks, jeeps, choppers, and boats as the game requires. Soldiers can throw hand grenades and knives, and vehicles can shoot missiles and launch rockets. The player's ammunition and grenades are limited, but can be stocked up by shooting barrels and crates or by shooting animals such as chickens and pigs. Occasionally a high-powered machine gun power-up appears, allowing the player's gun to have unlimited ammo and an increased rate of fire for 10 seconds.
The player has a damage bar that increases each time they are hit. The damage bar also increases upon shooting a civilian or hostage. Energy boost items randomly appear which, if shot, decrease damage by five points. Once the bar reaches maximum, the game is over.
One of the most ported arcade games of all time. It has seen releases on everything from the CPC to DOS, as well as the NES, and TurboGrafx-16.
In 2005, Operation Wolf was released on the Xbox, PlayStation 2, and Microsoft Windows as part of Taito Legends; however, light gun support is unavailable.
Endings
The game's ending was determined by factors in the game, in which multiple endings were attained:
- Exhaustion of health - Scene of player collapsing, and script saying "You have sustained a lethal injury. Sorry, but you are finished here."
- Exhaustion of ammunition - Scene of player in a prison cell, and script saying either "Since you have no ammunition left, you must join the hostages." (Arcade) or "You have run out of ammunition. You have no choice but to join the prisoners." (NES)
- Completing all six stages - The player meets the President of the United States and collects a large score bonus. The number of hostages determines the President's tone of voice and cash bonus awarded. The arcade game had only two endings in this regard, but the NES version split the endings to determine the President's tone of voice dependent on how many hostages saved. The game then restarts with a full charge of health and ammunition and a substantial increase in difficulty. The scenery also changes to a different time of day.
| Hostages rescued | Cash bonus | President's mood |
|---|---|---|
| Zero | $60,000 | Angry |
| One | $70,000 | Unhappy |
| Two | $80,000 | Disappointed |
| Three | $90,000 | Satisifed |
| Four | $100,000 | Happy |
| Five | $110,000 | Very Happy |
Miscellaneous
- When the machine is set to Japanese via a DIP switch settings, the game allows the player some flexibility in choosing mission order, and three missions can be skipped entirely. When it is set to English, the six missions are always played in a set order. The player is penalized for skipping missions by reinforcements being added to the Airport mission and by reducing the bonus earned after completing the Airport mission. When the game was ported to the NES, the Japanese version kept the mission select feature, while other versions again lacked it.
- Voiceovers are in English even when the game's language is set to Japanese.
- Some versions of the game (confirmed in European versions) featured extra game play features. This included a soldier holding a women hostage while attempting to shoot the player at the end of the Jungle (2nd) level, as well as randomly between levels the player being presented with a short sub level where several helicopters had to be shot down - the voice over stated "Warning, the enemy has located you!" at the start.
- The text at the end of the Village stage resulted in "THE VILLAGE IS FREED AND RECOVERED FROM DAMAGE." This is a mistranslation from Japanese; a more correct translation would be "THE VILLAGE IS FREED AND YOU HAVE RECOVERED FROM INJURIES."
- If the Super Machine Gun is on during the final helicopter, the time will not run out.
External links
- Operation Wolf at the Killer List of Videogames
- Operation Wolf at MobyGames
- Web-based Operation Wolf port (TG 16)
- Operation Wolf at SpectrumComputing.co.uk
- Operation Wolf (video game) on the Amiga at The Hall of Light (HOL)