Description of Operation Wolf ROM - MAME

If you are into multiplayer FPS games like me, you probably know that it takes either a lot of practice or a lot of actual game-time invested in the game to be at least fairly good. But from my own personal experience I’ve found, that some of the retro arcade rail-shooters can quite effectively double as ‘target practice’ programs, and Operation Wolf is certainly one of those games I’d recommend for such purposes, for—to begin with—it is an excellent shooter in its own right, especially when you consider its age. You see, there are rail shooters and there are rail shooters, the real ones. Some games (Aliens, Terminator, anyone?) are basically designed merely as coin-eating walls made of hitboxes—aim? Why??? Just hold the trigger and move the gun around the screen. Now, you won’t see that in Operation Wolf. Operation Wolf actually forces you to take the gun controller and actually aim. And, well, yes—it makes it somewhat easier (I’ve finished the first playthrough with like three coins on default difficulty and with mouse as a pointer), but let’s face it, throwing on hordes of enemies you can’t possibly kill at you isn’t completely fair, or is it? So how about just giving Operation Wolf a break? Now, what is this Operation Wolf all about anyway, you ask. Well, that’s rather straightforward. You’re a member of (presumably American) special forces, and your task is to retrieve intel on a POW camp located in an unnamed country in South america, and to rescue the prisoners held captive in there. The enemies (keep in mind that the game was released in the golden days of the ‘US War on Drugs’) are some kind paramilitary commie/narco-baron hybrids. And if you have a strong sentiment against anything even remotely related to communism, like me, shooting all those bearded Fidel Castro look-a-like clones will be a real breeze, take my word on that. The game is split into six ‘levels’, each comprising of a specific task like ‘disrupting the enemy communication systems’ or ‘gathering intel’. In each level you’ll encounter various kinds of enemies and you have to, well, shoot them as fast as you can. Which is kind of complicated by the fact that you have only a limited ammo supply and limited health points. But don’t worry you can pick-up new magazines, grenades and health-restoring drinks as you play by shooting crates, coconuts and various animals like pigs or toucans, that every now and then appear on the screen (and yes, I can imagine the PETA people going all over the wall now). Now, speaking of health points: plan ahead and prioritize, shoot the toughest enemies first to minimize the damage taken. You only have one life in Operation Wolf, so once the health bar is empty, you’re done, unless you pop-in another coin and hit continue (now that’s not a problem in an emulator, but it can sure ruin a purist’s day). Controls-wise, Operation Wolf is your typical swivel-mount rail-shooter. Now, what is that, you ask? Well, it’s almost the same thing as your ‘typical light-gun rail shooter’, except you don’t control it with a high-tech, photo-transistor based gadget, but with a simple UZI prop mounted to a bunch of potentiometers in front of the screen instead. The UZI style controller was equipped with a kick-back force feedback system, electric trigger switch and and a single button on the original cabinet. But since that’s not the kind of hardware your average Joe find laying somewhere in his garage, it’s more than likely that you’ll be forced to compromise when playing the game in MAME. And here you have basically three options: either you substitute the ‘swivel mount’ with a simple joystick, or with a gamepad analog stick (in which case I strongly suggest you don’t map it as ANALOG AXIS X/Y but as ANALOG X/Y inc/dec instead, because on most gamepads, the precision of the sticks usually sucks a big deal), or you stick with the mouse as your pointer (which is IMO the way of least resistance, and if you pump up the difficulty settings, you’re still in for some dense action). Have fun people.