A
shoot-'em-up for the
Sega Mega Drive. But there's none of the usual
sci-fi trappings in this one.
In an act of crass commercialism the likes of which have never been seen before or since in the world of videogames, Electronic Arts decided that they could cash in on the media frenzy surrounding the Gulf War by creating a game based around it (their logic must have gone something like "the media are treating this as entertainment, why don't we?"). Desert Strike ("no, not Storm, Strike!") was that game.
The setting was a purely fictional border conflict in the Middle East, where a crazed dictator was holding the world to ransom (as we are informed in standard-issue cheesy digitised cutscenes). You take to the skies in your trusty Apache helicopter gunship and blow things up in the name of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Petroleum. The game must have been quite popular, as it spawned a raft of sequels, including Jungle Strike, Urban Strike, Nuclear Strike, and Soviet Strike.