Operation Cobra Strike
Get the Nintendo 64 Version here!
General Kozlov's army has overrun the border provinces. One gunship stands between him and total victory. Yours.
Operation Cobra Strike is a top-down helicopter combat game inspired by the classic Strike series. Fly freely across huge open maps, juggle fuel, armor and ammo, and work through a chain of objectives in each mission: destroy targets, rescue prisoners, escort convoys and take down massive bosses.
FEATURES
Five large campaign missions: desert, coastline, grassland, frozen tundra and the enemy capital. Every map is open to explore, with 5–7 main objectives plus bonus objectives.
Varied mission types: knock out radar and SAM networks, winch prisoners aboard and fly them home, stop fuel convoys, escort UN aid trucks, defend a village against armored waves, recover intel, and beat a silo launch countdown.
Three huge boss fights: a battleship whose gun turrets you destroy one by one, the Stormcrow VTOL gunship, and General Kozlov's Flying Fortress.
Survival management: watch your fuel and armor. Land on friendly pads to refuel, repair and rearm, and grab supply drops dropped by destroyed enemies.
Arcade firepower: chain gun, lock-on rockets that can also shoot down incoming missiles, plus Triple Hit and Fire Wall gun upgrades, shields and wingman helicopters.
A full enemy army: infantry, jeeps, APCs, battle tanks, super-heavy tanks, rocket launchers, AA guns, SAM sites, patrol boats, gunboats, enemy helicopters, ground-attack jets, interceptors and bombers.
Dynamic lighting on pixel art: golden-hour coastlines, dusk battles and a pitch-black snowy night where your searchlight is your best friend.
Strafe and dodge: slide sideways while keeping your guns on target, and double-tap to sidestep incoming fire.
Scoring: combo multipliers, an end-of-mission rank from S to D, and saved best scores for every mission.
Three difficulty levels: Recruit, Veteran and Elite.
Full controller support, rebindable keys, and a choice of mouse-aim or classic keyboard controls.
An original chiptune soundtrack.
CONTROLS - pc
Keyboard and mouse:
WASD – Fly
Mouse – Aim
Q / E – Strafe (double-tap to dodge)
Left click / Space – Chain gun
Right click / Shift – Rockets
M / Tab – Tactical map
Esc – Pause
Xbox controller:
Left stick – Fly
Right stick – Aim
LB / RB – Strafe (double-tap to dodge)
RT – Chain gun
LT – Rockets
View – Tactical map
Menu – Pause
TIPS
Hover slowly over a friendly landing pad to land, refuel and rearm.
Hover low over prisoners to winch them aboard. Your cargo bay holds six.
Press M often. The tactical map shows your objectives and safe landing zones.
CREDITS
Pixel art by Albi Lico (@alb_pixel) – alb-pixel-store.itch.io
Comments
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I noticed that you linked a Nintendo 64 version and I gotta ask:
How did you get this into an Nintendo 64 rom? This has me really curious now.
I used pyrite 64 it’s a game maker for n64. Converted the assets and removed A LOT from the original game so that they would work for the 64. Of course it’s way more technically involved than that but pyrite is where I’d start!
Cool. Though, I find myself curious on how you make and update stuff so quickly and some are a bit skeptical. Unfortunately, that kinda includes myself, even though I do think you were sitting on some of these projects for a little while and finally found some time to finish them.
a lot of what I do is look at open source materials. I said honestly anytime I’ve been asked that I use qwen 3 mainly which is an LLM coding agent that runs offline on my pc. No data center connection. If you’d like to look into that look up something like “qwen offline via ollama and opencode” that should get ya some details. I use it to aid me in writing things, for the shimmer engine for example. A lot of ideas come from you all and I try and find open source solutions in software I use and enjoy or just know of. That said I have used Claude as well. I know a lot about what I’m doing but no one knows everything. The things I could not figure out, I got help that way. I don’t view it the same as say generating an image. An image is stolen work no matter how it’s generated. It uses something someone else made as a source without asking. As for code, there a finite amount of ways something can be written in code. Lots of ways sure but it’s using logical strings to get to the goal, not stealing someone’s humanity put into a visual medium. As for the game though I’ve started this project like 30x over the years (dies inside a bit) I even have a fully 3d version I’ve made that I just don’t know how to distribute as it’s an actual full fledged game. It has ps1 style gfx. I understand some may not like that I have used ai even a little. I don’t judge them for that. Anyways I hope this has been some clarity and honest enough for you about how I do things. I write it and get help here and there. Oh also I’m a stay at home dad who has a massive amount of free time so that helps.
Offline LLM, eh? That's fascinating. I suppose I'll let that fly, but keep in mind that, as you said before, not everyone is not gonna like it.
I hope you keep vetting that thing and clean up the code.
I'll test the N64 version, BUT...I do suggest writing less wordy summaries for the mission screens. As someone pointed out, there might be a readability issue on the Nintendo 64 since it's a smaller res platform. Plus, I think there are some shadows that give off that "AI-assisted" vibe as well. Just keep working on your skills since you do have a good amount of free time. Keep it up and I think you might rely less on LLMs and more on your intuition.
I might be a bit too optimistic, but it's my honest opinion as someone who is heavily anti-AI. Sorry.
all the assets come from here https://alb-pixel-store.itch.io/helicopter-assault-assets
bought em a year or so ago. shadows are dynamic in the pc version which is probably meh in some places. but yeah no worries, updates will slow some as im having health issues but I see a dr soon to hopefully get help for them