Fly your aircraft past the various obstacles, whilst picking up fuel and knocking out the occasional gun.
Controls:
Left Arrow: Left
Right Arrow: Right
Up Arrow or S: Up
Down Arrow or X: Down
Space or A: Fire (Hold down for autorepeat)
The Java4k version has been updated.
The game has been uploaded to http://www.java4k.com/index.php?action=games&method=view&gid=268.
See the attached pdf for full instructions.
Tested on Windows XP, Vista and OSX 10.4
Hey, I manually modified the ‘F to fire’ to ‘A to fire’.
I’m still working on the “update your game” page, it’ll hopefully be up and running in the next couple of days.
Oops, you’re right, that was supposed to be an ‘A’. Thanks for fixing it.
wow this game is awesome (Zaxxon).
really find the S,X buttons odd to use though, IMO would be better to use UP, DOWN keys since they are next to left and right keys, and you can use the same hand.
but great game.
Hey, this is really impressive! Very well done!
I’d use S / D for up / down though, since you fire with A (that way, you can have three fingers side by side).
EDIT: Gasp, that’s a hard game!
A great version of Zaxxon, working fine on Windows Vista too ! But I still need to practice hard until I reach the bunker…
Cool game. But I think the controls could be better. I just currently finding them horrible to use.
What about:
A/D for Left/Right
W/S for up/down
F for fire
Thanks for the comments. I could add some alternative control keys, so players could find a layout they like. Choosing keys is a bit tricky as different countries put the keys in different places.
Germany and central europe: Y and Z are swapped
France: A and Q swapped; Z and W swapped; M moved to right of L
Italy: Z and W swapped; M moved to right of L
So, with my current keyboard layout, the French already need a slightly different finger arrangement.
I could make cursor up-down double up for S and X to accommodate those who would like all movement controls on one hand.
Space to fire is good because a) it’s always in the same place; b) it’s semi-standard, so a lot of people who don’t read the instructions will try it and find that it works.
Space is often bad, as it doesn’t play nice with arrow keys (due to the hardware limitations). Although, from memory, it is only the combo of up/left/space that won’t work. So you should be fine here. 
Awesome game BTW!
True. Shift is good as well. Plays nicely with everything and doesn’t move.
Just make WASD and the arrows both work. That way people can choose to use 2 hands for directions or one and those people with different keyboards can still use the arrows. Then make 2 fire keys as well like “Z” and “/” or something.
very nice, my biggest problem was that once you crash, you HAVE to go to the side to “un-crash”, you can’t go up.
It isn’t possible to fly over walls which are three blocks tall (otherwise it would be too easy). I should probably add this to the instructions. Otherwise as far as I can tell you can ‘un-crash’ upwards. Give me another shout if there’s still a problem.
On another subject entirely, I’ve got a version with the ‘fire’ key auto-repeating, which makes life much easier. Also added Up/Down cursor as alternates for S & X and the Space bar as an alternate Fire key. I noted the earlier comment about hardware limitations for cursor keys and the space bar, but both my keyboards work Ok, so I guess it depends on the hardware implementation. There’s still the ‘A’ fire key, if anyone has a problem. The plan is to put this version up on my website this evening and fix the version on Java4k once Appel has finished working on the edit facility.
Niiiiice, Alan_W!
Very playable, very pretty. And smooth.
I’d rather use up/down arrow keys to move up and down.
I thought the exact same thing too.
same here
I have uploaded a version which supports Up/Down Arrows for movement and SPACE for firing.
In addition the Fire buttons now autorepeat.
This is at http://www.circuitswamp.org/projects/java4k2010/falcon4k.html
The java4k.com version will be updated as soon as the editing facility is available.
This is great, love the smooth isometric graphics for 4K!
I’m a greater fan of the ‘arrow key version’ for sure 