Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf is a military themed shoot ‘em up video game developed and published by Electronic Arts.  The concept of the game was inspired by the Gulf War with its story depicting a conflict between a Middle East dictator and the United States.

A terrorist leader named General Kilbaba stunned the world by invading a small wealthy country in the Arab Emirates and taking control of the nation.   With General Kilbaba planning to expand his control within the Middle East, the President of the United States orders the deployment of a special forces team to handle the situation.  Not wanting to deploy a full air strike and risk the lives of innocent civilians, the president approves the deployment of a chopper-based attack.

The game places players in control of an Apache helicopter with the objective to destroy enemy weapons, rescue hostages and capture enemy personnel while demolishing enemy bases.  As pilot of the special forces team players must complete four campaigns made up of multiple missions to weaken the enemies defense and bring General Kilbaba’s plan for nuclear warfare to an end.

The conception of the game began when former Electronic Arts employee Mike Posehn met with EA president Trip Hawkins after experimenting with a flight simulator called “Fly” that was in developed for PC but was later cancelled.  Hawkins offered Posehn the opportunity to join Electronic Arts again and lead the development of a new game.   He suggested that Posehn develop a game for Sega’s soon to be released video game console, the Genesis and recommended that he create a game similar in nature to Choplifter.

Choplifter was a military themed shooter released in 1982 for the Apple II, remade in 1985 for arcades and later ported to the Sega Master System.  Hawkins felt that flying a helicopter and rescuing people would be appealing to gamers and that Posehn could apply what he had learnt from experimenting with the cancelled flight simulator “Fly”.  Posehn accepted Hawkins’ offer and began working on a prototype for the Sega Genesis.

The game began development prior to any discussion of the Gulf War and was originally based on the Lebanese Civil War.  The game was being developed under the working title of Beirut Breakout prior to the shift in story to be much more similar to the Gulf War which had just began.  The game’s environment was changed to the Persian Gulf region and the majority of the story was created for Desert Strike before operation “Desert Shield” was announced by the United States government.

The game released in March 1992 for the Sega Genesis and was an immediate commercial success.  The title instantly became a top selling game and remained on the top-10 best seller’s list for months after its release, going on to be Electronic Arts’ best-selling game at the time.  The success of the game led Electronic Arts to create ports for the Super Nintendo and other platforms as well as spawned the creation of the “Strike” series of isometric shoot-em-ups.