F-14 Tomcat: 2001
Developer: Pipedream Interactive, Inc., Virtucraft, Ltd.
Genre: Simulation
One of the Game Boy Advance’s launch titles from Majesco (alongside Boxing Fever and Iridion 3D), F-14 Tomcat is essentially a port of Absolute Entertainment’s 1994 SNES game Turn and Burn: No-Fly Zone. The game content is exactly the same, but it features a multiplayer mode between other systems (if they have a copy of the game and the GBA Link Cable, of course) and a brand new storyline: the player controls a F-14 pilot chosen by the US government to be assigned in the theater of operations of a war between the republics of China and Taiwan to protect America’s “interests” in the region.
The game includes, apart from the previously mentioned multiplayer mode, a landing practice mode, like Turn and Burn. It was later implemented in Majesco’s two following GBA flight sims, 2004’s Super Hornet F/A-18F and 2007’s F24 Stealth Fighter, which re-used this game’s engine, with the option of selecting between a landing carrier or a landing strip.