The Hunt for Red October

for Game Boy

In early military submarine games, the central command post – the cockpit of the boat, so to speak – was the focal point of the action. In titles such as Silent Service, the player could use the instruments there like sonar or periscope to determine the correct coordinates for the further course. The Game Boy conversion based on the licence for a related movie was obviously intended to fit more into the typical scrolling-action-scheme of this handheld, which led to a rather unique submarine-shmup.

The plot

The intro picks up on the espionage story of that movie about a hijacked Russian super-submarine called Red October. The player has kind of a remote side-view to move the boat through long horizontal underwater levels. Natural stone formations or random shipwrecks can be used as cover from enemy submarines. When under attack from above by helicopters, destroyers or aircraft carriers, the super-submarine's super-weapon is useful: the technically advanced cavitation-drive makes the boat invisible. By equipping some homing missiles, enemy ships can be neutralised literally by the touch of your fingertip. However, collecting these power-ups is often difficult due to the winding underwater structures accompanied by tricky manoeuvring for favourable firing positions and good hiding places to cope with the attackers. Or you can save yourself the trouble of finding all the homing missiles and shoot your way clear with the simple – but unlimited – torpedoes. Frequently, a destroyer carelessly looking in the wrong direction can quickly be surprised from the opposite side.

The challenge is increased by particularly narrow and well-guarded passages on the one hand and by challenging end bosses on the other. These stationary undersea-defences have only tiny weak points, which are extremely well protected by huge cannons or laser barriers and therefore often require several attempts to take them out.

Inside the station

These rather imaginatively armed bunkers highlight the missing attempt to use the movie-licence for a detailed scenery. Whereas the home computer versions content scenes like abseiling from a helicopter or defusing a bomb and on the NES version, you can see small video sequences with political sabre-rattling as a reference to the film.

According to the instructions, The Hunt for Red October can also be played by two players via the link cable, with one player controlling the submarine and the other creating attacks with the enemies. I was never able to test whether this is fun. Nevertheless, this game was a personal favourite in my collection at the time. Just the rather high level of difficulty due to the lack of a save-option prevented me from playing it that often.

In fact, even today I could still feel the intended fun of the game at times, i.e. the excitement of manoeuvring behind enemy lines. As a little nice diversity from the numerous other action-packed shmups with the generic space-setting, I liked the unagitated, consistent underwater gameplay.