Video Game / Strike Series

GET TO DA CHOPPA!!!

The Strike Series is a series of five games from Electronic Arts, where the player takes control of a combat helicopter to undertake several missions for the U.S. government (and later on a fictional American covert military arm known as STRIKE), usually attempting to thwart the plans and lives of various megalomaniacal dictators or warlords threatening the world's safety.

The games are played from an isometric perspective, and as such are more tactical than an out-and-out shooting game, requiring precision in 360 degrees and management of resources such as fuel and ammunition.

The series includes:

• Desert Strike, set in Iraq at the end of the Gulf War where the player must thwart the Saddam Hussein-esque dictator General Kilbaba.
• Jungle Strike, which deals with General Kilbaba's son Ibn Kilbaba forming an alliance with the Colombian drug lord Carlos Ortega in the name of revenge. After their initial assassination attempts on the President of the United States are foiled, the player is sent into South America to locate and capture them.
• Urban Strike, in which the player fights H.R. Malone, an insidious politician who seeks control of the media and plans to convert the USA into his personal armed fortress.
• Soviet Strike, the first of two Fifth Generation games where the STRIKE organization must take down a mysterious Russian terrorist called "The Shadowman" and his plans to bring back the glory of Soviet Russia through violence.
• Nuclear Strike, which closes with the hunt for the ex-CIA warlord Colonel Lemonde in his pursuit to take down the world with the deconstruction and conquest of Southeast Asia before causing enough instability across the world, using stolen nuclear weaponry.

A sixth game in the series, Future Strike, was teased at the end of Nuclear Strike, but was ultimately released without the Strike branding as Future Cop: L.A.P.D.. A compilation of the first three games was also announced at one point for Sega CD as Super Strike Trilogy but was not released.

Oddly, it's a franchise that its publisher never considered for a modern incarnation, despite fairly strong sales during its heyday.

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Contains examples of the following tropes:

• Ace Custom: Vila Ceaucescu, a Romanian warlord goth dominatrix in Soviet Strike pilots herself a customised battle tank with loads of extra armor and a black and red paintjob called the "Black Widow". Her archenemy, Dr Ukranian, and his bodyguards pilot the same tank but with a light gray paintjob.
• Ace Pilot: The player character. You also have a selection of Ace Co-Pilots to choose from.
• Action Girl: Andrea Gray in Soviet and Nuclear is the best example. News reporter when wearing her brown wig and suit, asskicking inside field agent when in her combat togs with natural spiky blonde hair.
  • Naja also counts in Nuclear Strike as the awesome rebel leader in the first mission and your main copilot for most of it.
  • A couple of the co-pilots in Urban Strike fall into this category.
• Artistic License – Chemistry: In Nuclear Strike, you're treated to the line "You mix Nitrogen and Chloride; you get salt". Nitrogen Trichloride is, in fact similar to teargas.
  • The writer of that line probably was confused about the chemical formula of salt, NaCl. Na stands for Sodium (AKA Natrium), not Nitrogen, but the other half is Chlorine.
• Artistic License – Engineering: Nuclear Strike features the SA-4 Ganef and SA-6 Gainful. Both are formidable adversaries in their own right but their portrayed functionality in the game is completely incorrect.
  • The SA-4 Ganef is a TEL (Transporter Erector Launcher) vehicle, not a TELAR (Transporter Erector Launcher and Radar). It requires a Radar equipped vehicle to accompany it and relay targeting data and it needs to remain still to fire. As a long-range medium-to-high altitude air defense system, it would fare poorly against low-altitude threats. Especially if they were flying nap-of-the earth.
  • The SA-6 Gainful is also a TEL (Transporter Erector Launcher) vehicle that cannot fire upon enemy aircraft without a Radar equipped vehicle.
• Artistic License – Geography:
  • Neither mission in Soviet Strike takes place in Russia until the final one: Crimea and Black Sea Strike take place at the south of Ukraine (at the time of the game's release), Caspian Strike is most likely set in Iran, "to the north of Operation Desert Strike", and Dracula Strike takes place in Transylvania, which has been *Romanian* territory for a long time. The artistic license part becomes even more obvious when you realize that, according to the loading screens, both Crimea and Transylvania are located "somewhere in Southern Russia".
  • The mission in Pyongyang in Nuclear Strike actually does match the layout of the real central Pyongyang well... except that the game map is for some reason rotated almost 90 degrees.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The sheer amount of vehicles you can commandeer in Nuclear Strike are mind-boggling. However, most of them have the debilitating quirk of not being able to pick up ammo, fuel or even plot-important NPCs, thereby making them very useless aside from being a glorified moving weapons platform. That said, if you do not need to pick up any NPCs and you just need to lay waste to everything in the shortest amount of time, these vehicles suddenly become very, very practical.
• Artificial Stupidity: In Soviet Strike's final level there's a possibility that you may get a SNAFU during the final mission seemingly out of nowhere. The reason for this is that due to an oversight the mobsters you can bribe to assist you aren't flagged to be non-hostile to the KGB boss and the Zoo you dropped him off at earlier is close enough that they can fire at and potentially kill him. Mercifully, due to another oversight this does not make the game unwinnable; you won't have any dialogue to direct you, but completing the final objectives overrides the fail-conditions and allows you to see the ending regardless.
• Badass Boast: The motto for STRIKE.
  Gen. Earle: "We measure our successes by the wars that didn't happen!"
• Black Helicopter: A video used for TV commercial for Soviet Strike showed a maintenance crew pointedly spray painting over all official markings on a Cobra attack helicopter while a broadcast in the background keeps insisting the government will take no action.
• Book Ends:
  • Jungle Strike begins and ends in a combat mission over Washington DC.
  • The beginning of Soviet Strike and the very end of Nuclear Strike has Hack saying the same thing:
    Hack: "Synchronicity threshold crossed at 0100 hours. General, there's some bad business going on."
• Bottomless Fuel Tanks: Averted. You will regularly have to refill your vehicle during a mission, or you'll crash, although Easy Logistics make it as simple as winching up fuel tanks into your helicopter, where it is automatically added into your fuel tank. Played straight with the F-117 in Jungle Strike however, which has both infinite fuel and ammo, presumably since the game play mechanics were designed for a helicopter and not a constantly moving plane. However, to balance out difficulty, the plane will wreck if you hit a building, whereas doing that with the helicopter just deals a small amount of damage.
• Bottomless Magazines: Jungle Strike features an F-117 with literally infinite ammo and fuel. This was done because the game's mechanics weren't really designed to handle a constantly moving jet fighter. The level has significantly less fuel and ammo pickups, so you will need to use the Stealth to stay afloat and also to be a skilled pilot as it will explode on impact with any buildings.
• Bowdlerise: The intro sequence in the original Sega Genesis version of Desert Strike included a scene where a guard is slowly lowering a prisoner hanging from a rope into a large bubbling vat, possibly meant to be boiling water. Later versions changed the scene to simply have the prisoner standing behind bars with the guard standing in front of them, as well as editing out the scene where Kilbaba (renamed Mubaba) slaps his subordinate.
• Boxed Crook: Hack. He's originally a Playful Hacker that's jailed for his crimes. He was recruited by STRIKE so that he could use his skills for good.
• Black-and-White Morality: Nuclear Strike, in contrast to the Grey-and-Gray Morality undertone of Soviet Strike.
• Camera Abuse: In Nuclear Strike, after the Big Bad is nuked, you will see Cash (the mercenary you hired since the second mission) and Naja (the guerilla leader from the first mission) kissing passionately, and then Naja pulls a gun, shoots the camera.
• Contrived Coincidence: Awfully lucky that the leader of North Korea has an AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter in a museum fueled, armed and ready for flight right when you need more firepower, isn't it?
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: In Soviet Strike one mission requires you to get information out of the head of the Russian KGB....by kidnapping him and winching him down into the Moscow Zoo bear cage. He's terrified of bears.
• The Computer Is a Lying Bastard:
  • In the second half of the first map of Nuclear Strike, you are told that the UH-1 Huey that you will be commandeering does not have SMART Armor and cannot use repair kits to repair the damages. In fact, you can still do so without any problems.
  • The hint video for the "Suspicious Trucks" objective in the final Mission of Soviet Strike tells you to aim for the trucks' cabs, but it doesn't matter where you shoot them as long you destroy them before they reach the bridges. The synopsis also claims that the trucks are destroying the bridges to cut off Yeltsin's escape, but during the later Escort Mission he only touches them for a moment before turning around and taking a completely different route.
• Cool Plane: But of course.
  • Desert Strike: AH-64 Apache.
  • Jungle Strike: RAH-66 Comanche and F-117 Nighthawk.
  • Urban Strike: Fictional Mohican attack helicopter and UH-60 Blackhawk.
  • Soviet Strike: Super Apache.
  • Nuclear Strike: Super Apache, UH-60 Blackhawk, Sea Apache, UH-1 Huey, RAH-66 Comanche and A-10 Thunberbolt. The final mission lets you pilot the Russian Mil Mi-28 Havoc and there is a hidden Ka-52 Kamov.
• Crimefighting with Cash: The Russian mob in Soviet Strike during the Moscow mission can be swayed to your side by "buying" them (namely, dropping a crate on a helipad near them) with valuables: gold, diamonds, counterfeit cash, TVs and genuine jeans.
• Critical Existence Failure: Your chopper can be shot full of holes from all manner of rocket and AA gunfire, down to 5 remaining hitpoints and still keep fighting just as well as it does at 100% health, but one stray bullet from a soldier's rifle, and...
  • Same happens with the ground missions in Urban Strike (you control the pilot outside of the helicopter). You have to be even more careful in that mission because at least you can juke back and forth in a helicopter to avoid shots.
• Denser and Wackier: The Fifth Generation versions. To give an idea, one mission takes place in a radioactive wasteland in Transylvania (inspired by Chernobyl), where you have to kill a Romanian Gulag dominatrix (yes, you read that right) who had grown to become a ruling guerrilla leader in charge of a nation, apparently powerful enough to make a play for a nuclear reactor to use the nuclear materials to launch rockets over Europe while dealing with the local ruler, a Mad Scientist who has a private army large enough to crush the United Nations.
• Deadpan Snarker: The player character in the Mission Briefing screens for Jungle Strike and Urban Strike, as well as Ivan Uralia and Nick Arnold in Soviet Strike.
• Decoy Protagonist: A variation occurs in Nuclear Strike. Despite being the cover chopper, the Super Apache is only playable in the first half of the first map before needing to be brought down due to smoke particulates in the air. The second map has you playing the Super Sea Apache instead. In every map afterwards, the Super Apache does not make any appearance whatsoever.
• Defcon 5: Averted in the final mission of Soviet Strike, where Earle warns that Shadowman's coup succeeding means "the world is at DEFCON one!".
• Destroyable Items: In Jungle Strike, the player can blow up half the buildings in Washington DC and still win the mission with no more than a few points deducted from the mission's final score. Just be sure not to blow up any famous monuments.... or the soldier standing guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The IRS Building is fair game, though, and you actually earn points for blowing it up.
• Distressed Dude: Nick Arnold gets captured twice by Shadowman in Soviet Strike. The first time, you rescue him quickly; the second time, he only gets freed at the very end of the final mission. He even has a reputation in-universe for frequently getting into trouble and needing to be bailed out before the game starts.
• Driven to Suicide: If the last mission in Soviet Strike ends in a SNAFU, you get treated to a cutscene of Andrea sending one last communication to STRIKE before arming a bomb with a 5-second timer to destroy evidence of STRIKE's involvment and to avoid the upcoming nuclear holocaust caused by Shadowman.
• Due to the Dead: Ivan Uralia thanks STRIKE for finally stopping Vila and Ukranian in Transylvania as their victims will finally rest in peace.
• Dysfunctional Family: Amad's family in Soviet Strike is not the most stable of families. In fact, they'll blindly murder each other with their individual units out of pure rage if they're paired against the one they hate (Though it's really Evil Uncle Nimrud that's the problem; Bessus and Delilah won't fight with each other).
• Easter Egg:
  • Soviet Strike has Santa Claus in Crimea and a vampire Elvis in Transylvania.
  • Also in Soviet Strike in the first three maps you can trigger voiced lines not found anywhere else in the game by flying to the far corners of the maps.
• Easy Logistics: What luck that our helicopter can instantly replenish ammo, fuel and even armor just by winching up supplies that just happen to be scattered all over the battlefield!
• Elaborate Underground Base: The final level of Urban Strike takes place inside H.R. Malone's enormous underground base beneath Las Vegas, which is not only big enough to fly a helicopter around in but has a floor space that could be measured in square miles. It's basically a standard level map that happens to be set underground, with lots of empty space between targets/objectives.
• Elvis Impersonator: The first mission of Urban Strike has a hidden civilian in white called "The King" who awards some extra points when rescued. There are also dancing Elvis impersonators inside the Las Vegas casino. If you hang around one long enough, their dancing will generate an armor crate for you. This particular mission is extremely difficult because of how hard it is to avoid enemy fire while running around on foot, so these guys can be crucial to your survival.
• Escort Mission: Happens in every game sooner or later.
  • The Washington D.C. level in Jungle Strike ends with you escorting the Presidential Motorcade back to the White House. It follows a specific route and there are enemies waiting for it at almost every corner. The one saving grace about that is that the Motorcade won't advance unless you destroy the road blockade in front of it. This lets you go clear out the enemies first.
  • Soviet Strike has you escorting President Boris Yeltsin, protecting him from coup forces while he drives around Moscow in his personal car. Yeltsin "hasn't driven in thirty years" and it shows. Also, he just has to stop at the local burger joint that some of the coup forces also happen to be dining at. And he's enjoying every second of the ride even as tanks and gunships try to blast him.
  • Nuclear Strike has you escorting a busload of politicians in Pyongyang to a hardened shelter before a nuclear warhead goes off and destroys the city.
• Exposed to the Elements: Radiation in Soviet Strike is always somehow more harmful to your Super Apache (which eats through its' armor) than it is to human beings. To boot, Ivan, being a survivor of the Chernobyl catastrophe, "feels like home" inside of a Transylvanian NPP that's all covered in green goo on the inside. The U.N. forces deployed nearby don't immediately die as soon as they start glowing green, either - in fact, they still burn green after being escorted to the evac chopper.
• The Faceless: Shadowman always appears filmed by a thermal camera, making his face impossible to see except for his glasses and mouth when he speaks.
• Fog of War: The later games featured this in order to justify respawning enemies.
• Fox-Chicken-Grain Puzzle: An interesting take on this happens during Soviet Strike with Amad's family: his sister Delilah (The Fox), his uncle Nimrud (The Chicken), and his cousin Bessus (The Grain). If Nimrud's forces cross paths with either of the others, the two groups will fight. You also have to make sure they fight the right enemy units or else they will be obliterated. It also fits nicely with their personalities: Delilah is cunning and sneaky, Nimrud is a hotheaded playboy, Bessus doesn't give a crap about the family feud and prefers to tend his farm. To hammer it home, Delilah and Bessus use respectively light tanks and APCs while Nimrud uses WW2-era heavy tanks and the enemies consist of a column of heavy tanks and a column of light tanks.
• Good Is Not Nice: Soviet Strike has the STRIKE representative outright tell the President they will kill him if he refuses to play ball, but also mention that they prevented a civil war in Mexico and that their presence has stopped numerous other wars from starting, so it’s in everyone’s best interest to let STRIKE function as is. They’re quick to reassure the President they have no interest in interfering with his domestic operations either.
• Good Guns, Bad Guns: Played straight in all of the series where Apache is not only the cover helicopter but the hero helicopter and then averted in Nuclear Strike where the helicopter you pilot in the last mission is the Mi-28 Havoc. There is also a hidden Ka-52 Kamov you can pilot in the same level.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Ivan Uralia, the last copilot you obtain in Soviet Strike, is covered in burns from his rescue efforts during the Chernobyl disaster. His introductory cutscene has a long drawn out shot of the one on his face.
• Gratuitous Russian: To the surprise of no one, Russian writings in lowercase cursive are sprinkled all over Soviet Strike's FMVs. Also, Vladimir Chisinau's and Grymyenko Ukranian's names. The former's family name references Moldova's capital - which is localized differently in the Russian language and thus, should've been transliterated as is. Ukranian, meanwhile, has two family names to himself.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Malone in the final objective of Urban Strike. When captured, he tries to blow up the Mohican with a suicide bomb vest. He's dealt with by being dropped onto his own superweapon to blow it up with him.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Averted in the first game, where the Apache's weapons load-out is 100% accurate. (Yes, it can actually carry 38 Hydra rockets, 8 Hellfire missiles and 1200 20mm Chaingun rounds at once.)
  • A very strange example in that the attack chopper can also carry up to six passengers. Perhaps it's best not to ask where.
  • Apparently these are Super Apache and Commanche helicopters, which not only has smart armor (explaining the extra lives) but a ramp drops down out the back, below the tail. Completing the first Moscow mission shows a video of it, and numerous CG videos will show where passengers would sit (sort of where the engine would be, under the rotors, separate from the cockpit).
  • Jungle Strike plays this mildly, with the chopper carrying one extra missile, 4 more rockets and 500 more cannon rounds when compared to actual armament for the Comanche. Urban Strike features the fictional Mohican next-generation combat helicopter with exactly the same loadout.
  • One mission in Jungle Strike plays the trope completely straight, see the Bottomless Magazines entry above.
• Inertia Is a Cruel Mistress: It certainly makes hovering over various pickups trickier.
• Infinity -1 Sword: The fast winch and anti-tank cannon hidden in each level in Soviet Strike. You have to collect them in every level, but being able to instantly pick up items and to destroy anything short of a tank in one cannon shot more than makes up for it.
• Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: Your chopper can't change altitude, so you have to fly around two story buildings or mountains. Urban Strike has you flying over the fog of San Francisco, with the taller buildings and Golden Gate Bridge jutting above it. The Fifth Generation games alter this slightly, having your helicopter constantly flying at a given altitude above the ground. You'll be shown flying up over hills and small buildings, but you still have to fly around larger geographic features and structures.
• Isometric Projection: For the 16-bit games; the later installments changed to a follow perspective, but can be toggled back to isometric projection if the player wishes to.
• Intrepid Reporter: Andrea's job is to act as one to deliver cover-up stories for STRIKE missions.
• Irony: The first level of Jungle Strike takes place in the city of Washington D.C., whereas the first level of Urban Strike takes place in the jungles of Hawaii.
• Just Plane Wrong:
  • The final mission of Desert Strike features a C-5 Galaxy cargo plane as a "nuclear bomber".
  • The AH-1, AH-64, RAH-66, Mi-28, and Ka-50 CANNOT carry passengers in real-life.
  • No, no matter what engineering procedure is used, the A-10 cannot be made into a VTOL.
  • For some reason the AH-64 Apache in the first game appears to have the tail section of the RAH-66 Comanche. The main differences are the ducted rotor (Apache has an open one) and the tail wings being above the rotor (they are below it on the Apache).
  • The second game has in the third mission a brief clip from what is supposed to be inside the cockpit of a AH-1 Cobra as Andrea is getting it ready for takeoff. However, it is obvious from what is shown that the helicopter she is in has space for two people to sit side by side, while the Cobra has the cockpit laid out with just two seats in front of each other.
• Kick the Dog: Or in General Kilbaba's case, Slap the Deputy.
• Killed Off for Real: There's one mission in Urban Strike where you can kill your copilot. Naturally, this removes them from the game. Oddly though, the player isn't court-martialed for it, and the rest of the mission is restarted like nothing happened,
• Kill It with Fire: Many of the series' main bad guys are killed in firey explosions.
• Live-Action Cutscene: The fifth generation titles were loaded with them. Mission briefings, intel and updates used live actors and stock footage, where enemy profiles usually used CG. All the relevant information can be read through as with the previous games, as well as political views and motivations of who you're fighting, with videos available with a button press. The N64 port of Nuclear Strike lacked these however.
• Mad Scientist: Dr. Ukranian in Soviet Strike is obsessed with the idea of curing the radiation poisoning in Transylvania, to the point that he has his private army kidnap local citizens and UN peacekeepers to experiment on them. It's implied he did find a cure, as Ivan Uralia was one of his patients.
• Made of Explodium: Every vehicle and building will come apart in a nice shower of fragments and orange fireballs.
• Made of Iron: Though not invincible, your helicopter can take a lot of missile hits and keep flying.
• Magic Plastic Surgery: Carlos Ortega, the South American drug lord, survives the final mission in Jungle Strike and changes his identity to that of the very American H.R. Malone for Urban Strike. The first mission in Urban Strike involves finding the plastic surgeon who worked on him.
• Magic Tool: Your helicopter's winch can pick up all manner of objects and instantly switch between hook and rope-ladder.
  • Armor Repair Toolboxes instantly repair all damage to your chopper with no explanation as to how or even what was fixed. Hand Waved in Nuclear Strike as the SMART Armor. Also acts as a medkit for the pilot himself in Urban Strike.
• Mêlée à Trois: The Transylvania mission in Soviet Strike involves a Russian warlord and a Mad Scientist feuding over access to the nuclear fuel of a power plant to build nukes, with a UN peacekeeping force caught in the middle. Strike sides with the UN and weakens the two other until the warlord and the scientist decide to duke it out themselves and mutually kill each other.
• Monumental Damage:
  • The first and last levels of Jungle Strike take place in Washington D.C. with several associated monuments that can be destroyed but will trigger a mission failure. In the first level, you have to protect them from terrorists.
  • Urban Strike includes San Fransisco where you have to protect the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, and destroy sections of Alcatraz. Coit Tower is also present and can be destroyed with no ill effects. The villain later attacks World Trade Center in New York, taking out a large chunk of its corner that makes it look uncomfortably similar to 9/11.
  • The last level of Soviet Strike takes place in downtown Moscow. Through the course of the mission sections of the Kremlin wall are destroyed, as is Lenin's Mausoleum. And you can blow up the House of Parliament for an armor repair.
• More Dakka: In Nuclear Strike, you can pick up weapon packs that change either your rockets or your missiles with something else. Typically, these will be autocannons. Try using them alongside your regular machineguns for even more dakka.
• Muzzle Flashlight: Some of the night missions. A particularly famous one in Jungle Strike has this as basically the only way to see your surroundings.
• My Nayme Is: Dr. Ukranian's name is consistently spelled without the extra "i" throughout the briefings.
• Never Speak Ill of the Dead: Fail a mission via SNAFU and Earle will angrily chew you out on the Game Over screen. Fail a mission via death and Earle will be solemnly mourning the loss of the Commander no matter how badly you were doing before.
• Never Trust a Title:
  • Most of Jungle Strike does not take place in the jungle. It has actually the most varied environments in the entire series, including desert, snowy mountains, island archipelago and Washington D.C.
  • Urban Strike starts with a mission in a jungle.
• Nintendo Hard: For starters, most of the time, you are a lone helicopter going against fully armed enemy battalion and Easy Logistics is partially averted where you have to repair, resupply and refuel in times. Also some mission lack sufficient intelligence, forcing you to search either ammo, armor or fuel by yourself.
• Non-Standard Game Over: If at any point you render a mission unwinnable or destroy major landmarks, you'll be sent a Return to Base/SNAFU message, which you must obey in order to restart the mission from the beginning.
• No One Gets Left Behind: "Over here!"
• No Celebrities Were Harmed:
  • In Desert Strike, General Kilbaba (who invades a small but wealthy Arab emirate) is basically Saddam Hussein and the camouflage-wearing man giving the mission briefings resembles General "Stormin' Norman" Schwarzkopf.
  • In Jungle Strike, Carlos Ortega is a very powerful South American drug lord, like Pablo Escobar.
  • Sadissa Savak in Soviet Strike is a mixture of both Saddam Hussein and Bashar Al-Assad in terms of look and goal (his army is invading south Russia to capture an old chemical weapons plant, both men are known for using chemical weapons against their opponents).
  • Likewise, Alexi Kaponov, Russia's most feared mob leader is explicitly stated to be one to Al Capone himself. While gangs in Russia were indeed known to be sometimes inspired by television, the resemblance between both names is a little too on the nose.
  • Nuclear Strike, has the North Korean leader called "Kym Zung-Lee".
• Non-Lethal Warfare: The "News Chopper" in one Nuclear Strike mission which is only armed with pellets, tear gas and smoke bombs. Somehow, this does not stop it from being able to blow up tanks.
• One-Man Army: Or one-helicopter army. Lampshaded during the first game's intro sequence when the newsreader says the Special Forces' top pilot is being sent to deal with the dictator because the President doesn't want to risk an all-out air strike.
  • Soviet Strike and Nuclear Strike justifies it for the helicopter being the main enforcer of American-based top secret military intelligence unit "STRIKE".
  • Taken to extremes in Nuclear Strike where your single helicopter is more or less able to defeat the entire North Korean army, albeit with some minor assistance.
  • The on foot sections in Urban Strike show that (ropey controls aside), the player character is also quite capable of infantry combat.
• Only in It for the Money: Harding Cash's motivation for doing anything for you in Nuclear Strike.
• Plot Tailored to the Party: The final mission of Nuclear Strike, which involves all of your allies.
• Punny Name: One of your allies in Nuclear Strike is a mercenary named Harding Cash, with the nickname "Cold" added to the beginning.
• Qurac: The actual country involved in Desert Strike is never named (some translations call it "Ireq"). In game the flag is definitely the Iraqi flag, with only the colored stripes.
• Railroading: In the first mission of Nuclear Strike, you can complete the first objective by using the PACV Hovercraft instead of the Super Apache which would prevent its servo-generator array from being critically damaged by exposure to the smoke pits. Unfortunately, the game is scripted to have you lose the Super Apache regardless of which vehicle you used to destroy the smoke pits.
• Ripped from the Headlines: Most obvious in Desert Strike and Soviet Strike in relation to the Gulf War and 1991 Soviet coup attempt respectively.
  • The extra mission in the CD-ROM version of Desert Strike involves taking out "superguns" (enormous ballistic cannons with a range in hundreds of kilometers), very similar to the real life "Project Babylon".
• Rule of Funny: The Strike series runs on this trope. So much only the mission briefings and transmissions give any kind of seriousness.
• Sensory Abuse: The FMVs in Soviet Strike and Nuclear Strike are rife with obsessive-compulsive editing, complete with abundant usage of filters, running lines of code and numbers, multiple picture-in-picture scenes and frequent angle transitions that could even happen mid-sentence. Think EVA's computery animations but more in-your-face.
• Shout-Out: The first enemy you're likely to see in the second game is an ordinary van with an RPG-wielding terrorist in the roof hatch, ripped right out of Back to the Future.
  • Hack appropriately calls the skirmish between the Vampire Squad and the Zombie Squad a "monster mash".
• Sickly Green Glow: Heavy radiation contamination is greatly exaggerated as causing objects to glow with a disturbingly bright green.
  • The Transylvania region in Soviet Strike Mission 3 has several large gouges of irradiated land. And you'll have to rescue some victims that have early-stage radiation poisoning.
  • After the capital of Pyongyang is devastated by a nuclear explosion, you'll find dissidents wandering around with radiation sickness.
• Side Quest: You're given bonus points for going above and beyond the mission parameters. If your mission is to take out a power station, take out the electrical towers with it; if you only need to capture one enemy commander to fulfill your objective, get the other three anyway; and so on. Desert Strike, in particular, has an unadvertised mission to locate and rescue the MIA co-pilot during the second campaign (unsurprisingly, he is the best co-pilot in the game).
• Stock Footage: Soviet and Nuclear Strike use this for pretty much everything that doesn't need to have the game's own characters shown. The scene of Strike Team Echo being caught infiltrating for example is actually from the real life Operation Nimrod.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome:
  • In the prologue to Urban Strike Tony Barnes (a.k.a. "Agent Ego"), a former pilot of Jungle Strike and a spy for the Strike C.O.R.E., is killed off by a car bomb after giving a report that H. R. Malone is constructing a superweapon to destabilize the U.S. government.
  • In Nuclear Strike, Nick Arnold is killed during the first mission where, after you rescue Nick, you are reported that Nick's dead and the Big Bad taunts you with a video of Nick being mauled by a tiger.
• Tanks, but No Tanks: Jungle Strike Level 3 features US M-551 "Sheridan" tanks armed with soviet 23MM AA guns. The real Sheridan was armed with a stubby, 155mm "gun" that fired anti-tank missiles.
• Trapped Behind Enemy Lines: Several of your copilots have to be rescued by you.
• Turns Red: Inverted. At the start of each campaign, the enemy has various radars and electrical systems in operation which, while active, make their units target you faster, hit harder and have significantly higher armour. Naturally, these radars/power plants will be among your first objectives to level the playing field.
  • Status Buff: What the Alert Zones does, basically. Most of the time, it also acts as sort of a Beef Gate in earlier games to keep you from finishing later missions first.
• 24-Hour News Networks: The plot is delivered by a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo version of CNN, the GBS. As if this isn't obvious enough, GBS is basically the information arm of STRIKE.
  • The 16-bit installments featured EANN (Electronic Arts News Network), in the levels and some of the cut-scenes between missions.
• 20 Minutes into the Future: Urban Strike was made in 1994 and takes place in 2001. Many, many fictional weapons inexplicably appeared during this timeframe.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: The on-foot levels in Urban Strike.
• The Unfought: At the end of the final level in Nuclear Strike, the Big Bad LeMonde is killed in an airstrike sent by your higher-ups.
• Universal Driver's License: In Jungle Strike, Urban Strike and Nuclear Strike, the player operates additional vehicles, including a (not so) stealth fighter, a hovercraft, an armed motorcycle, a cargo helicopter and an experimental "Ground Assault Vehicle".
  • Throughout the series you occasionally drop your copilot to drive various vehicles, such as a bus, bulldozer and snowmobile.
• The Unreveal: Soviet Strike never gives a clear answer to the actual identity of the Shadowman, with even the most likely suspect Yuri Vathzinov, the last head of the KGB being unconfirmed. The game even teases the possibility that he is in reality Nick Arnold, one of your copilots, due to similar speech patterns, Shadowman's inexplicable ability to get into STRIKE's supposedly impenetrable computer network, and how conveniently Arnold being out of action on your side lines up with the Shadowman being active.
• Video Game Caring Potential: Trying to rescue every civilian, allied soldier, and enemy non-combatant in every mission, even after you've rescued enough to achieve the mission objective.
  • Though, there is the benefit of gaining/recovering some hitpoints from dropping them off at landing zones. Recovering copilots in Urban Strike allows the player to have better rates of fire and winch recovery speeds.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Whether accidentally or intentionally, people that can be rescued or captured can be killed at your own volition. And there's something of an interesting programming oversight in the later games.
  • Soviet Strike Mission 1: There are groups of wild deer that you can waste some of your ammo on if you want to shoot something that's not human.
  • Soviet Strike Mission 2: The Asmov Naval Base is overrun with Yugarian Troops stranded and struggling to hold out against Ceausescu's paramilitary force. You can either do nothing and let the Yugarians be destroyed or put them out of their misery as a faster alternative.
  • Soviet Strike Mission 3: There are some villages in the Caspian passes with camels in them which you are free to shoot without any consequence.
    Amad: "Do not do that again, Commander. People will have to walk miles when you kill camels."
  • Soviet Strike Mission 4: You are advised that you won't be able to save every scientist that's in the salt mine before the Tomahawk Missile strike which means that you can put all 15 scientists there and leave 8 of them to die. There are also some cows in the level that you can shoot.
  • Soviet Strike Mission 5: There are several civilians in the area that are about to be caught up in the fighting around Moscow. You can opt to shoot them instead of rescuing them.
  • Nuclear Strike Mission 1: You have to abandon the Super Apache and transfer to a Huey. The Super Apache automatically self-destructs, killing any rescued people inside it that you forgot to drop off.
  • Nuclear Strike Mission 3: You have to abandon a converted News Chopper and transfer to a Super Cobra. You can then destroy the News Chopper along with any nearby enemies and remaining passengers. There are also guard dogs that you can shoot even though they are absolutely no threat to you whatsoever.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: One mission in Urban Strike has your copilot exit your chopper to complete an objective. Naturally, you can kill them, although this removes them from the playthrough. Oddly, you only get chewed out by your CO for it, instead of getting charged for treason.
• Violation of Common Sense: Due to an oversight, not only do you not have to rescue Nick in the final level of Soviet Strike, it's actually recommended that you don't, as the four ICBMs that you have to destroy as the Big Bad is escaping will only trigger after you pick him up. Ignoring Nick allows you to unload on Shadowman's plane at your leisure, essentially cutting the game's final mission in half.
• Walk into Mordor: Subverted in Urban Strike; while the player enters Malone's Casino on foot, they get back to da choppa when it comes time to scour his Elaborate Underground Base beneath the casino.
• Warrior Poet:
  • Amad in Soviet Strike is an Iraqi-born former SAS operative who both speaks in a rather flowery manner and quotes various philosophical lines.
  • Ivan Uralia is a former Red Army helicopter pilot who, while more curt than Amad, can be quite philosophical and spiritual. Being cured of acute radiation poisoning might explain it.
• Weaponized Landmark: In Soviet Strike towers in the Kremlin wall turn out to be hiding ICBMs. The cannon statue behind its walls is, surprisingly, an actual loaded cannon.
• Weapon of Mass Destruction: Chemical, bio and nuke weapons in Desert Strike, nukes in Jungle Strike, super-lasers in Urban Strike, nukes in Soviet Strike and Nuclear Strike. Exaggerated in the final mission of Nuclear Strike: A pair of missiles named 'Shiva's Daggers' which will cause chain reaction to the earth's ozone layer, stripping it and exposing the earth to the sun's radiation in full, culminating with The End of the World as We Know It.
• We Do the Impossible: Take on a battalion of tanks alone, check; sink nuclear submarines with a hovercraft, yep; destroy an air defense network consisting of Patriots, AA Guns, RPG-armed soldiers, radar and patrolling helicopters with your one chopper, no problem. And that's just in one game.
• Western Terrorists: Beauford Lemonde, the Big Bad of Nuclear Strike, is an ex-CIA agent turned warlord who, after stealing a nuclear device from Belarus (heavily implied to be the remnant of Shadowman), sparks chaos from the Indochina, South China Sea (where Lemonde bluffs STRIKE with false leads) to Korea (where Lemonde successfully nuke North Korea, almost sparking a war between North and South that was thwarted by STRIKE decimating the remnants of the North Korea army at the DMZ border), with the final goal of launching nuclear missile into the atmosphere to destroy the atmosphere's ozone layer itself for basically no reason other than he can.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Soviet Strike had a shadowy character only known as the "Security Czar" running STRIKE, who at the end threatens Yeltsin into allowing STRIKE to act freely within Russia. In Nuclear Strike this sinister conspiracy overtone is gone, along with the entire character of Security Czar.
  • Amad and Ivan Uralia neither appear nor are mentioned in Nuclear Strike.
  • The rushed nature of the Dracula mission in Soviet Strike means you never fight Dr. Ukranian, and what becomes of him is unknown.
  • After the first mission in Urban Strike you learn that the villain H.R. Malone is actually Carlos Ortega, one of the main villains of Jungle Strike who has undergone plastic surgery. This plot point never comes up again, even when you face Malone in person.
• You Killed My Father: Ibn Kilbaba in Jungle Strike seeks revenge on America for his father's death in Desert Strike.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: The climax of Jungle Strike is set in the dense Amazon, blowing up secret underground bases and fighting enemy Apache helicopters until you eventually capture the Big Bad Duumvirate of Ibn and Ortega and take them back to Washington DC to stand trial at the Supreme Court... and then the remains of the Drug Lord's army invade DC and bust them out, forcing you to evacuate the President, wipe out the enemy forces and kill the two once and for all. However, Urban Strike reveals that only Ibn was killed after his escape vehicle was destroyed by the player, but Ortega was still at large.

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