Nova Hawk

Low on fuel, laser running hot, and a whole wave of saucers coming up behind you. Drop to lift 1, thread the gate of the glass refuel dome, set down on the pad, and get back out there before the next wave arrives.

Nova Hawk is a side-scrolling arcade shooter for Windows. You pilot the starship Nova Hawk over six alien worlds. It's a loving remix of, and tribute to, Parsec, the 1982 TI-99/4A classic: the same wave order, the same attack patterns, the same "press fire to begin", rebuilt in widescreen with painted pixel art, a metal cockpit HUD and a new soundtrack.

Nova Hawk is free and non-commercial.

Features

• Three lifts that work like speed gears. Lift 1 hugs the ground and scrolls slowest, lift 2 is the middle lane, and lift 3 is the fast, high cruise. Shift up and down on the fly.
• A laser that overheats. Heat builds while you hold fire and cools when you let go. Hold it too long and the ship blows up.
• Fuel, and the refuel dome. Fuel keeps draining, faster while you thrust. When it runs low a countdown starts and a shielded glass dome scrolls in. Enemy shots bounce off the glass and enemy ships get pushed back out. Fly in through the entry gate, land on the pad, fill the tank, and leave through the exit gate.
• A station worth the stop. Inside the dome, the deck is lined with shops: Urbanus Garage, Anderson Fuel, the TI 99/4A Space Diner and Dramis Parts. It also has hazards: erupting gas vents, crackling electric arcs and drifting puffballs. Miss the gate and you'll lose a chance to refuel.
• Waves in the classic order. Swoopers, Urbites, LTFs, Dramites, Saucers and Bynites, then an asteroid belt where big rocks split into smaller ones. Bynites fire missiles and can go invisible, and Killer Satellites turn up without warning.
• Six worlds to fly over. Each level brings a new ground theme (Violet Rift, Crimson Dust, Cobalt, Toxic, Amber, Glacier), with distant towns and roadside billboards behind the ridge. Each level is faster and tougher than the last.
• Female robotic voice callouts for the classic lines: "Alien craft advancing", "Nice shooting", "Laser overheated", the refuel countdown, "Extra ship", "Asteroid belt", "Advance to next level" and more.
• Original soundtrack.
• Keyboard or gamepad. Rebind every action on both, with conflict swapping, stick deadzone and sensitivity sliders, and a one-click reset to defaults.
• Settings: separate master, music, effects and voice volumes, plus fullscreen or windowed (the 1280×720 picture scales with black bars and never stretches).
• Top 10 high score table with three-letter initials. You start with 5 ships and earn extras at 5,000, 15,000 and 25,000 points.

Controls

These are the defaults. Change any of them in Settings → Controls.

Action	Keyboard	Gamepad (Xbox-style layout)
Climb	Up arrow / W	D-pad up / left stick up
Dive	Down arrow / S	D-pad down / left stick down
Thrust	Right arrow / D	D-pad right / left stick right
Drift back	Left arrow / A	D-pad left / left stick left
Fire	Space	A
Lift down	Q	LB
Lift up	E	RB
Pause	Esc	Start
Fullscreen	F11	Back

Menus also work with the arrow keys, Enter and the mouse.

System requirements

• Windows 10 or Windows 11, 64-bit
• About 75 MB of disk space
• No install: just unzip and run NovaHawk.exe in the NovaHawk folder. Keep the _internal folder next to it.
• A gamepad is optional.

First launch

The exe isn't code-signed, so Windows may show a blue "Windows protected your PC" box the first time you run it. Click More info, then Run anyway.

Credits

• Special thanks to the creators of the original Parsec: Jim Dramis, Paul Urbanus and Aubree Anderson.
• Art, design and development by Mini Mongoose (AI assistant), working alongside Cursor (AI coding agent).
• John Jobagy, guide, along for the ride.
• Music made with Suno AI v6 (suno.com).

Nova Hawk is a free, non-commercial fan tribute. It isn't affiliated with or endorsed by Texas Instruments or the original Parsec team.