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On March 3, 1969 the United States Navy established an elite school for the one percent of its pilots. Its purpose was to teach the lost art of aerial combat and to insure that the handful of men who graduated were the best fighter pilots in the world. They, Succeeded Today, the Navy calls it Fighter Weapons School. The flyers call it TOPGUN! What is it all about? Afraid you won’t be singing in bars and dating civilian flying instructors but you will be flying non-stop Air to Air against a selection of Navy Aggressor A-4s. So, if you have not flown much A-A recently this could be the thing for you with three campaigns set in different years with a selection of Jets to fly. The lesser striped A-4F Mongoose does not take prisoners -- great balls of cheese! The campaigns consist of: Campaign 1 1970 Select from the US Navy / Marines F-4B (1965), F-4B (1967) and F-4J to go up against A-4E aggressors. Campaign 2 1974 Select from the US Navy / Marines F-4J (1974) and F-4N to go up against A-4E aggressors. Campaign 3 1978 Fly the US Navy F-14A (1974) and go up against A-4F Mongoose aggressors. Oh yes and you need to try and survive 20 missions with only about 3 wingmen. Check your six or else an A-4 flown by such celebs as Viper and Jester will blow you out of the sky! The environment This is set over a reworked South West US Terrain and has a NAS Miramar runway layout like the real thing and some very nice looking features. Think Tactically So, as you can see you ideally want to avoid getting sucked into any turning fights and that also applies to the F-14A because the up-engined A-4F kinda cancels out the F-14s better turn ability. Keeping and supporting your AI wingman is a must and is key to dealing with the A-4 hoards and keeping your wingman alive is a must to complete the target of 20 missions. Your wingman is although not the most intelligent of pilots he is also vulnerable to your wayward sidewinder shots and general incompetence in issuing commands. If you have not flown the Mirage Factory F-14 the mod comes with, then there are a few different key presses for the radar and also advise learning how to use the radar (it helps!). Where'd Hollywood go man.......oh there he is - never never leave your wingman! We are the Mods The music it comes with is ace and (thank god) not a sign of “Lead me on” by Teena Marie. Those who had the soundtrack might still have flashbacks to some of the tracks on it. Anyway no need to touch the music or the terrain. I am using Starys SARCASM mod in this for environmental effects and also some Top Gun themed 1080 menu screens by Viper63a. The screens can be simply dragged into the Menu and Flight mod folders depending – also remembering to rename them to the correct file name so they show. You can of course change whatever else suits you for the environment you wish to replicate. Here Viper is telling me how my name will never be on the Top Gun trophy after losing all my wingmen in about 3 missions. Starting a campaign Important here suggest setting Campaign Difficulty as normal, and set Weapon Supply to Unlimited otherwise you will be down to AIM-9Bs by about mission 5. My first several campaigns had a distinct theme of running out of wingmen Do you think your name is going to be on the trophy? – You will need a lot more than ego to beat Viper and his souped up A-4 The F-14A took a while to get used to and best to use its advantages of radar with IFF. I have only used AIM-7Fs in these campaigns and do advise taking out the bad guys BVR if you can. With the F-4s you have less advantages but again playing to your strengths will allow you to prevail. Every now and then a cargo plane takes off on its flight to Hong Kong full of Rubber Dog s***. If you screw up just this much you might be on the next flight.