Rob "Bomber" Henderson

"My first taste of a computer sim was a game called TIME-GATE. It was early eighties and the computer, a ZX81 was my brothers. Basically, you were piloting some kind of non-descript spaceship around the galaxy, destroying all the invaders. There were no real complex controls ( not compared to the sims available now ), but you could have a good dogfight in it. Most of the enemy ships were just copies of those in the StarWars films. Once you cleared one system you could then jump-space into the next system and so the game went on. However, with my young imagination, I pretended that I was in a Hurricane and the space ships I was shooting were various German fighters and bombers. I guess I was about 12 at the time. Sadly, for me, my brother was married and living in his own house, so flying time was very precious as I had no computer of my own. This really got me hooked on the subject of aircombat and after much pestering I finally received my own Spectrum computer - a 128K. The first thing I brought? Two flight sims: A.C.E. (Air Combat Emulator) and Strike Force Harrier by Microsoft."