Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Here is the answer to the question every single person asks about this game. You were not bad at it. The controls were inverted on purpose. During the landing sequence, pressing down on the d-pad raises the nose and pressing up drops it, because that is genuinely how flying an aircraft works. Konami built a real flight control scheme into a movie tie-in aimed squarely at children and told absolutely nobody.
Top Gun reached the NES in North America in November 1987, published by Konami, riding a film that had been the highest grossing movie of 1986 with over three hundred and fifty million dollars worldwide. It was big enough that Kmart stuck its own name on the commercial, which tells you plenty about how hot Nintendo was in that window. The cartridge went on to move more than two million copies. You get an F-14 Tomcat and four missions, and everything is fine right up until that carrier appears on the horizon.
It gets worse, or funnier, depending on your mood. The prompts bark UP and DOWN at you without ever clarifying whether they mean your nose angle, your altitude or the button, and your speed quietly affects altitude on top of all that. Then from the middle of mission two there is a second nightmare waiting, mid-air refueling, where you call in a tanker and try to line a fuel hose up with a marker on your own plane. Take longer than about a minute and the tanker just gives up and flies away.
The strangest part is that failing barely mattered. Miss the landing and you lose a life, then carry on into the next mission regardless. Your jet is in the ocean and the game simply shrugs and hands you a fresh set of targets. There is no pause button either, and the Konami Code does not work, which stings a bit given who published it.
Konami clearly knew. When Top Gun: The Second Mission turned up two years later it arrived with better graphics, actual in-game music, a two player dogfight mode, and a carrier landing they had deliberately made easier. One last curiosity for you, the Japanese release shuffled its soundtrack around, using the refueling tune as the main in-game theme and leaving the refueling sections completely silent. So be honest, did you ever actually stick that landing?
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#topgun #topgunnes #nes #nintendo #konami #kmart #nintendohard #retrogaming #retrogames #80sgaming #gamingnostalgia #1987 #videogamecommercial #classicgaming #gameforestgf #youtubeshorts #gaming
Here is the answer to the question every single person asks about this game. You were not bad at it. The controls were inverted on purpose. During the landing sequence, pressing down on the d-pad raises the nose and pressing up drops it, because that is genuinely how flying an aircraft works. Konami built a real flight control scheme into a movie tie-in aimed squarely at children and told absolutely nobody.
Top Gun reached the NES in North America in November 1987, published by Konami, riding a film that had been the highest grossing movie of 1986 with over three hundred and fifty million dollars worldwide. It was big enough that Kmart stuck its own name on the commercial, which tells you plenty about how hot Nintendo was in that window. The cartridge went on to move more than two million copies. You get an F-14 Tomcat and four missions, and everything is fine right up until that carrier appears on the horizon.
It gets worse, or funnier, depending on your mood. The prompts bark UP and DOWN at you without ever clarifying whether they mean your nose angle, your altitude or the button, and your speed quietly affects altitude on top of all that. Then from the middle of mission two there is a second nightmare waiting, mid-air refueling, where you call in a tanker and try to line a fuel hose up with a marker on your own plane. Take longer than about a minute and the tanker just gives up and flies away.
The strangest part is that failing barely mattered. Miss the landing and you lose a life, then carry on into the next mission regardless. Your jet is in the ocean and the game simply shrugs and hands you a fresh set of targets. There is no pause button either, and the Konami Code does not work, which stings a bit given who published it.
Konami clearly knew. When Top Gun: The Second Mission turned up two years later it arrived with better graphics, actual in-game music, a two player dogfight mode, and a carrier landing they had deliberately made easier. One last curiosity for you, the Japanese release shuffled its soundtrack around, using the refueling tune as the main in-game theme and leaving the refueling sections completely silent. So be honest, did you ever actually stick that landing?
Subscribe to Game Forest GF for retro gaming content every single day.
#topgun #topgunnes #nes #nintendo #konami #kmart #nintendohard #retrogaming #retrogames #80sgaming #gamingnostalgia #1987 #videogamecommercial #classicgaming #gameforestgf #youtubeshorts #gaming
