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Blitzer, developed by Steve Sherman and distributed as shareware by anyone who cared to do so in 1991.

I got my copy of the game from the floppy disk that came with the original file.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enBlitzer,developed by Steve Sherman anddistributed as shareware by...anyone who cared to do so in 1991.I got my copy of the game from the floppy diskthat came with the\"Windows After Hours\" book from 1992,and the game was not onlycovered in its own subchapter,but was prominently featuredelsewhere on the package.Someone seemed to be proud of this game,and as a kid who loved helicopters and action games,Blitzer looked to be amazing.And since it was a free gamethat came with a book I'd borrowed,that was even better.But the truth was to follow.And the truth was a state of disillusionmentthat sits with me to this day.That state begins when the game starts up,revealing an image that has hauntedmy nightmares ever since childhood.I genuinely don't know what thisis about, but it left an impressionso I suppose it served its purpose.There also the traditional shareware messagefiguratively poking you in the sideuntil you pony up 10 bucks for the full game,so that's a nice balance of content here already.You can read up on the gameor just drop right into the action,but the former is advisedsince the controls aren't the most intuitively laid outand are not re-bindable.Oh, and there's this short backstoryabout how the earth as been overrunby a hostile alien force,and the responsibility of saving the worldsomehow lies on YOUR shoulders.But it's pretty irrelevant.Really, it's just a game mixing up elementsof Defender, Choplifter and Scramble,and that's all you need to know.Actually, there's one other thing you need to know,and that is that any of thosegames is a far superior experienceto the mishmash of clunky arcadeweirdness that Blitzer provides.But before I flagrantly rant about why,allow me to calmly rant about why.The goal is to shoot anything that moves,unless that moving thing is a stick figure.These stick figures arescientists that need to be rescuedbecause they're terrible at directionsand have gotten themselves stranded inthe most aggravating locations imaginable.This includes above-ground canyonsand underground cavernsthat have to be blown open usingyour weapons to gain access to.Just use the arrow keys to bunglearound the cumbersome landscape,shooting awkwardly at aestheticallyquestionable alien ships otherwise.You can kind of shoot straightand kind of shoot down and at an angle.You can kind of drop bombsfrom the nose of your chopper,and you can definitely ignite a neutron bombto destroy everything on-screen.Of course, you only get two screen-clearing things,so the rest of the time, you're either exploringnew depths of the phrase \"awkward controls,\"or you're cursing your aircraft for being so uselessat maneuvering around thischunky representation of Earth.And being that this is an unforgiving arcade-style game,anything you do depletes resources,so your fuel, photons, shields, bombs and patienceare all draining at an incrediblyrapid rate the longer you play.While you can return back to ahome base to restock your junk,doing so is more of a challengethan you can possibly imagine.Blitzer's problem is that it's just not very playable.The way your chopper moves,the way the enemies move,the placement of the scientists,the tiny, little bullets and bombsthe blocky landscape that's irritating to shoot through,and the fact that the screen doesn't moveuntil you're right up against the edge.There's also the copious clipping of spritesand other graphical weirdness in the game,which makes things even more bizarre to play,And you might see a warning message aboutplaying in normal VGA mode instead of Video 7,but it makes no difference on anyof the hardware I've played this onover the past 22 years.The more I look at it–Ugh, holy crap, this game is lacking.There's no sound effects, no music,no useful feedback when you shoot stuff.The aiming is absurd, the color palette is strange.Just nothing feels right at all.And come on, what does thishave to do with Wolf Blitzer?Sure, there's a situation going onin this room as I play this game,but it's one of downright perplexity.Although, you know what?As unplayable as this is, it's retained astrange and vivid place in my memoryever since I first got it running all those years ago.I'll never forget this bizarre trip of a shoot 'em upbecause it's just so... off.Nothing about it feels cohesive,adequate, or even very comfortable.Much that initial startup image,Blitzer leaves me unsettledand feeling unsure about whyI'm even doing this with my time.And I guess maybe there's some twisted value to that?I don't know and I don't think it mattersbut I do appreciate when a gameleaves a mark on my psyche,and for better or for worse,this shareware shooter is one of them.And that's why I've chosen to immortalize ithere on LGR.And if you'd like some more bizarre shareware gamesand some other stuff from my childhood and beyond,then why not check out some of my other videos?I do more of them every week.I've been doing so for coming up on five years.That's a lot of videos.Subscribing is appreciated,as well as being useful to you,as is checking me out on Twitterand Facebook and Patreon.And occasionally ranting at CNN's \"The Situation Room,\"wondering why there aren't morehelicopters clipping through alien shipson a blocky landscape.And as always, thank you for watching.\n"