Operation Cobra Strike is an on-rails first-person shooter game developed for TV game consoles. Its earliest known iteration was as a dedicated light gun-based plug and play system released by SDW Games in early 2006 as Operation: Cobra Strike.[1] The developer of the game is believed to be prolific unlicensed game developer Waixing, as a modified version would later be included on certain Wii clones sold in various regions in the late 2000s, which also contain other 16-bit plug and play games confirmed to have been developed by them.
Dedicated unit[]
Back of the box, along with an unboxed unit.
The dedicated Operation: Cobra Strike plug and play comes with a base unit and a manual. The base unit has two hardwired cables for video and mono audio as well as a hardwired light gun controller. The unit takes four AA batteries for power, with the bottom of the unit having two battery compartments that hold two AA batteries each. It can also accept power from a barrel jack power adapter, although the voltage it accepts is not specified on the unit or in the manual. The unit has a power button and an indicator light that lights up when the system is powered on.
The light gun for the Operation: Cobra Strike unit uses a shell that is closely modeled after the Namco GunCon 2 controller, which was originally used for a third-party PlayStation and PlayStation 2-compatible light gun named the X-Shooter. Compared to the X-Shooter, though, many of the switches and buttons are no longer used and are glued together to the rest of the shell. The game on the plug & play unit only makes use of the trigger button, and while not documented on the manual or packaging, the light gun has a switch that toggles a force feedback function that activates whenever the player is hit by an enemy in game. The light gun's tracking is solely reliant on the screen of a cathode ray tube television, which prevents the game from fully working on televisions with flat screen displays.
When the unit is powered on, an SDW Games splash screen is displayed. The unit will additionally display a screen telling the player how to reload in the game before going to the title screen.
Plot[]
The game is set in the year 2005 and follows a multinational counter-terrorist organization of elite military forces, named the Terrorist Abolishment Commando Team, or T.A.C.T. The organization was formed following years of worldwide terrorist attacks and have made it their goal to eradicate the terrorist cells and capture their leaders. In order to achieve this, the organization decided that their first mission against a terrorist cell, given the code name "Operation — Cobra Strike", had to be a solo mission. T.A.C.T. Headquarters would eventually choose Captain Oz (a stand-in for the player) to execute this mission.
Gameplay[]
The player, playing as Captain Oz, is tasked with navigating to five locations to eradicate the terrorist cell and eventually capture its leader. The game gives the player instructions on the mission that needs to be accomplished in each location in the form of messages sent by T.A.C.T. Headquarters to Oz, which are displayed as scrolling text in a computer window, before the mission begins. All five missions are auto-scrolling levels and have the player shoot terrorists that are actively trying to attack them with the light gun. Shooting is performed by pressing the trigger button on the light gun. The final mission takes place on the roof of the terrorist headquarters and has the player uncover the leader by shooting at a box he is hiding behind. All music used in this game are short looping audio samples.
Wii clone version[]
Around 2007 or 2008, Operation Cobra Strike would be ported to a hardware platform used for various Wii clones manufactured by Subor, which are based on 16-bit Sunplus SPG hardware and typically come with 16-bit plug and play games known to be developed by Waixing, a company based in Fuzhou, China that is more well-known for their unlicensed Famicom console releases. The more notable of the Wii clones using this hardware include the Zone 40, Zone Mini, and Reactor 32 systems. According to Chinese copyright registrations filed by Waixing, this version of the game has a release date of October 15, 2007, a filing date of February 1, 2008, and the registration number 2008SR02473. This port is only known to have been included on three Subor-produced Wii clones: the Interactive TV Games 49 in 1 from TaiKee, the MG Toys Play Power Station, and the Subor "V" console.
Title screen from the Interactive TV Games 49 in 1 version of the Wii clone port.
The Wii clone port of Operation Cobra Strike completely removes any light gun functionality originally present from the version on the dedicated unit (the Wii clone hardware uses infrared controllers that have no proper motion tracking). Instead, the cursor used to aim at enemies and objects is controlled with the D-pad on the controller. On the version of this port included with the Interactive TV Games 49 in 1, the SDW Games splash screen and logo on the title screen, as well as the reload notice screen, are removed entirely. The version on the Subor "V" retains the SDW Games logo on the title screen, although it is unknown if the SDW Games splash screen and the reload notice screen are left intact. Music looping in this port is also broken, with a short period of silence being introduced between the end and start point of audio samples. The Interactive TV Games 49 in 1, which includes the Operation Cobra Strike Wii clone port, is dumped and emulated in MAME.
Gallery[]
SDW Games version[]
