Metal Hawk/Walkthrough

Namco's Japan-only 1988 multi-directional shooter arcade game, Metal Hawk is divided into eight different areas: The First Point, Canal Zone, The Taskforce, Fortress in the Sky, Tank Buster, Attack the Airbase, Cross Fire, and The Last Target. The image on the right is the game's overworld map, which appears between each area to show you which one you will visit next; you must score a certain amount of points in each area within a preset time limit in order to move on to the next area. The amount of time you will have to clear each area in depends on what the arcade operator has set the "Timer Table" option in the options menu to - A: 130 seconds (2:10), B: 120 seconds (2:00), C: 110 seconds (1:50), D: 100 seconds (1:40). As soon as you insert a coin into the cabinet, the game will begin automatically like Pole Position and Thunder Ceptor; but before you do so, here are two important pointers.


 * If you are using MAME to play this game (which you almost certainly will be unless you are a native inhabitant of that "Land of the Rising Sun"), you will not be able to control Metal Hawk through the game's default settings; you must put the game into Service Mode by pressing F2 and set the "Motion of Cabinet" option to "Off" in order to fix this problem, which implies that the emulated cabinet is a sitdown.


 * Also, if your version of MAME is lower than 0.89u2 (released on 3rd December 2004), the game will display the text "2C" after its start-up tests have finished instead of the "legal notice" that is typical of Namco's Japan-exclusive 16-bit arcade games (except for Beraboh Man and Bakutotsu Kijūtei).