[ Retro Scan of the Week ] F-15 Strike Eagle
February 6th, 2012 by Benj Edwards
When I grow up, I’d like to be a VMR (Valued MicroProse Retailer).
This week’s Retro Scan is another Sid Meier MicroProse classic (see my scan of Pirates! from last year) and one of history’s most famous combat flight simulator games. I remember trying F-15 Strike Eagle briefly years ago, but I soon gave up on it because I have never been much into flight simulators. What did you guys think about it?
Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s your favorite combat flight simulator game of all time?
February 6th, 2012 at 9:28 pm
All time favorite for me was the first one I ever played. It was a sim called JF2 and I ran it on a 286 in DOS. Any flight sim I tried before then paled in comparison, and there wasn’t really anything to compare it to. Easy to learn and harder as you went along, and when you didn’t want to play anymore you could shift to free flight and wander around the SF Bay area. It was novel at the time and brings warm fuzzies to think of it now.
Time to dust of the 286 and find the floppy.
February 6th, 2012 at 9:56 pm
Yep! Still have my copy of F-15 Strike Eagle for the Tandy 1000 (still have my Tandy 1000, too–just don’t know if it still works)! I whiled away a few hours shooting down triangular wireframes and bombing squares… 🙂
Favorite combat flight sim ever? Maybe Warbirds?
February 7th, 2012 at 8:51 am
Favorite flight sim? Gotta be Dawn Patrol. Still playable to this day.
February 7th, 2012 at 11:02 am
If we can include space sims in there, then TIE Fighter. If not, the most fun I’ve ever had with a flight sim was Crimson Skies. Entertaining single player campaign, and just a total blast at a LAN party.
I’ve enjoyed the technical aspects of the more accurate sims, but if you just want to get in and dogfight, Crimson Skies is great fun. (If you can get it to run on modern systems, which is a challenge.)
February 8th, 2012 at 8:03 pm
I think mine is F-16 Multirole Fighter
http://www.mobygames.com/game/f-16-multirole-fighter
It was one of the few networked flight games I had at the time (I doubt anybody would have wanted to play against me with Independence Day anyway).
February 12th, 2012 at 8:38 pm
I played a lot of flight sims back in the 386DX days, but not much afterwards. Dynamix’s Red Baron was my favorite at the time, followed by Aces of the Pacific and then Battle of Britain. Aces of the Pacific was especially enjoyable when I could set unlimited ammo on torpedo runs.
February 19th, 2012 at 5:09 pm
F/A-18 Interceptor for the Amiga.
http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/fa-18-interceptor
There are two features of that game that combined to actually make the game enjoyable. First, it was fairly easy to get the plane airborne. Second, although the missions were as hard to complete as in every other flight simulator, we found our own purpose of the game. The Golden gate bridge featured in rich enough detail and me and my friends competed against each other trying to fly under the bridge as many times as possible without crashing into the water.
I also enjoyed F-15 strike eagle II on my Atari ST, but that’s because I found it to be more of an action/arcade title than a true flight simulator. Anyway, that was an amazing time when companies like Microprose could top the charts with a flight simulator. Don’t see that genre returning to the top of the sales charts anytime soon…
February 25th, 2012 at 2:46 pm
In the old times, I really enjoyed “F-19 Stealth Fighter” by Microprose and Lucasfilm`s “Their Finest Hour”. The first time I ran F-19 I was amazed by the graphical details, including “smoke” squares when you shot down anything. The game was quite complete for a 286 era game with complex missions, fuel management, air defences…..
Later I got hooked onto “Their Finest Hour” and I spent many hours playing it in the same computer (a Siemens 286 with VGA graphics I later traded for a Siemens-Nixdorf 486 at 25Mhz I still have in the closet with a bad Dallas CMOS battery…)
February 29th, 2012 at 1:26 pm
Played this quite a bit on my Atari ST! I think this one even had multiplayer? I do remember playing multiplayer on some flight sim. then there was a great WWI flight sim that I spent many hours playing! Knights of the Sky!