10 Video Games Based On Real Life Stories
8. Operation Thunderbolt
The plot of Operation Thunderbolt, Taito's sequel to coin-op classic Operation Wolf, revolves around a couple of Green Berets with improbably heroic names - Roy Adams and Hardy Jones - liberating the hostages of a hijacked plane in north Africa. Though that might sound like standard shooty-wooty fare, it's actually based on a real life event. At least, loosely.
In 1976, the separatist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked a flight from Tel Aviv headed for Paris, with the demand that the Israeli government release a group of Palestinian militants in exchange for their hostages. The plane was first diverted to Benghazi, Libya for refuelling, before landing at Entebbe, Uganda, with the support of dictator Idi Amin.
The Entebbe Crisis was ended when the Israel Defence Force stormed the airport, taking just 90 minutes to rescue the captives in an extraction known as Operation Entebbe, or alternatively as - you guessed it - Operation Thunderbolt.
Taito's version of events takes some liberties; Israeli soldiers didn't shoot everybody they ran into on sight, and the PLFP's two ports of call have been rolled into the fictional province of 'Kalubya' - clearly a corruption of Libya. Brilliantly, it's also possible to botch the save by accidentally executing the pilot at the game's conclusion, in a blunder almost as bad as Amin's own harbouring of the terrorists.