Military Flight Simulations in the 1990’s

About1942 The Pacific Air War was a World War II air and sea combat simulation from MicroProse -- you could regard it as the spiritual predecessor to the wonderful European Air War. It allowed you to fly in WWII for the US Navy or the Imperial Japanese Navy (an update also gave access to USAAF planes such as the P-40, P-38, and P-51).

AboutThis Mac sim featured fabulous flight modelling and was the predecessor to 1996's A-10 Cuba. Ran fluidly on an average machine in 1996.

AboutA-10 Cuba by Eric "Hellcats" Parker is a fluid and exciting sim which ran well on modest PC's. This sim was one of that rare breed which begged to be flown! The handling from taxiing to landing is pure flight sim joy! The wealth of detail, smoothness and sense of speed added up to an addictive experience The handling from taxiing to landing is pure flight sim joy!

AboutOne of the first Windows 95 flight sims and sequel to 1989's A-10 Tank Killer.

AboutThe Flight Sim Museum sadly remembers Jane's A-10 Warthog, the best sim that never took flight. A-10 Warthog was the greatest sim that never took flight. The crack team at Janes Combat Simulations had the rug pulled out from under their feet just before the 'Hog flew. Sim fans worldwide were bitterly disappointed when, in July 1999, Jane's announced the cancellation of the project. All we are left with are these tantalising glimpses of what may have been.

AboutAn arcade style air combat game played from a 3rd person perspective.

AboutThe successor to Ace Combat 2. Third in a popular series of air combat oriented arcade style games.

AboutIt also contained maps and a multimedia reference on Early Aviation pioneers. I have Aces: The Complete Collector's Edition. Except for A-10 Tank Killer 2: Silent Thunder, these sims all run in DOS.

AboutAt the time it was the most complex and popular World War 2 sim available.

AboutThe most complex and popular World War II sim of 1992.

AboutPart of the most complex and popular World War II sim series of the early 1990s. It had detailed cockpits, different for each aircraft type and some of the most detailed ground objects seen at that time in a VGA sim.

AboutAdvanced Tactical Fighters was the sequel to Marine Fighters, and third in the series. It introduced stealth and vectored thrust aircraft. I remember the first time sat in my hom-buil cockpit and booted it up on my 486 DX-66. I leapt into the Grumman X-31 and headed for the clouds. For a while I was convinced there was something wrong with the program because this aircraft just seemed too fast!

AboutAeroFighters Assault was developed by Paradigm Entertainment and published by Video System Co. Ltd. for the Nintendo in 1997. It was released in Japan as Sonic Wings Assault.

About Air Combat Classics is a collection of absolute classic flight sims from LucasArts released in 1993. It contained: Battlehawks 1942 | Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe | Their Finest Hour (Battle of Britain).

AboutAir Combat Yugeki-oh II was developed by SystemSoft for the NEC PC-9801 series of PC's in Japan. The player is a mercenary pilot working for the Asian Pacific Economic Network (APEN). "The package contained a 30 page manual and 2 floppy disks. The two floppy drives are necessary to play as it is impossible to install on the Hard Drive. Screen resolution was 640 x 400 pixels and 16 colors. There was a cockpit view only, no external view, and a special mode called the wired scan system for night missions."

AboutSimilar in style to the 2000 sim Crimson Skies, Air Power was a sim set in a fictitious land and set your colourful planes against zeppelins and other nasties!

About"Don't be misled by its title and the illustration of twin Tornado ADVs soaring across the cover of Psygnosis' latest battle-in-a-box. Air Support is not a screaming, seat-of-the-pants combat flight simulator, It's more like a tedious, and less enjoyable version of their own previous release Armour-Geddon."

AboutAir Warrior 3, released in 1998 is a popular on-line World War 2 Air Combat sim running in Windows '95 and '98.

AboutAir Warrior was introduced to the gaming public as a free - public domain - piece of software which could be downloaded and played in practice mode at home. You then logged on to a dedicated server in your city via modem and played in a virtual war.

AboutOne of the best AH-64 Apache sims, published when PC's were really getting some serious processing power.

AboutATAC (Advanced Tactical Air Command) puts you in the position of group leader of a mixed squadron of F-22's and AH-64's deployed to Colombia by the United States. It required you to plan and fly the missions, thus adding a tactical depth rarely seen in flight sims to that time.

AboutAdvanced Tactical Fighter by Digital Integration was an arcade - style flight game released in 1990 on the Commodore Amiga, Atari ST and PC.

AboutUNRELEASED. Lars Gramkow Nielsen reported: "From what I've been able to make out, it was supposed to be released after Falcon 3.0, as the second of the Electronic Battlefield Series sims - of which Falcon 3.0 was the first." My industry sources reported that the main problem was the low altitude rendering of terrain by the graphics engine, which pushed the hardware of the day beyond it's limits.

AboutA classic DOS sim, and complex for it's time!

AboutBack to Baghdad was an F-16 simulation set in the Gulf War (1991) . It was a DOS sim with claims to high fidelity of flight model and weapons systems modelling and was priced about 30% higher than other PC sims at the time. The publishers Military Simulations Inc. went on to specialise in military sims and released no more products for the home market. It was unique in that it supported a second monitor for the radar display - and this while running in DOS !

AboutPlay by email is fully supported and well suits the chess-like nature of the game. It is turn -based with events unfolding in real time once both sides have entered their decisions. You can zoom in and out on the action. You can set up for a 1 day event or elect to play out the whole 6 week campaign. Based on the reputation of Grigsby this will be good value for the board game crowd.

AboutIn 1992 16 bit processors had just arrived and we were plunged into an exciting world of flying polygons! The weapons were destructive to any object, no matter what the device or target. I have witnessed a Forger get hit AFTER launching from a carrier by a Mk83 slick released by a B-1B Lancer." Pretty good for a sim that came on ONE floppy disk - 720K !

AboutMy first impressions: Black Knight Marine Strike Fighter SE was distributed as a shareware demo in 1995 with some functions disabled. The graphics were VGA (300 x 200). The publisher was FormGen. The flight recorder played back your flight from various angles. It runs very fast on a 486 and is worth a look at as an introduction to jet combat sims. | 1998

AboutCheck Six was the first flight simulation from Pegasus Japan on the NEC PC-9801 Series. In this game the player is a mercenary pilot who gets rewarded for successful missions and can buy aircraft. Screen resolution is 640 x 400 pixels and 16 colors. It gives a similar impression to Air Combat III.

AboutChuck Yeager's Air Combat was for many people their first exposure to PC flight simulation of any kind and the beginning of a life-long hobby. The sim is a historical fulcrum between the living history embodied in Chuck Yeager and the younger generation trying to understand the experience of air combat in three wars and codify that.

AboutThis was the first game to really factor in morale for your troops, which added a lot of uncertainty to the gameplay. The whole series is undemanding on hardware and an ideal choice for whiling away time on a laptop.

AboutThe graphics engine used "Voxel" technology which was a novel way of treating pixels to gain more detail and speed. Rather than applying bitmaps to 3D terrain, each pixel actually contained it's own altitude data. The result was the most exciting terrain seen on a PC to that point in time. It excelled at producing a sensation of low altitude flight.

AboutIt was one of the last sims to run in DOS.

About"This was a late addition to the long line of flight sims for the Amiga, and it was also one of the best. The whole sim was based on the 1991 Gulf War ( Desert Storm ) and you could take to the skies in either the mighty Grumman F-14A Tomcat or the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18C Hornet."

AboutThis collection was published by Microprose in 1997. It contains four of Microprose's best DOS combat flight sims: 1942: Pacific Air War, Falcon 3.0, Fleet Defender and Gunship 2000.

AboutReleased in 1994, this was one of the very first flight sims to make use of the brand new S3 graphics chipset. This chipset enabled a doubling of the screen resolution from 300x200 pixels to an amazing 600x400 pixels. It was quite difficult to get running as I recall, requiring many hours of struggling with the graphics drivers. I remember clearly seeing a looping demo of it running in the local games shop. A Spitfire approached a German radar post and attacked. I couldn't believe my eyes at the graphical detail with trees, fences andd irt pathways. I would stand there for hours watching this thing until I splurged the couple of hundred dollars to upgrade my graphics card. I had only bought my first PC 2 months before and it already needed upgrading. That's progress!

AboutWorld War I air combat sim optimised for online play.

About"Flying Corps Gold is a better game." - Dave Whiteside

AboutI bought the Atari version and was blown away by the smooth and "complex" graphics and variety of gameplay, even though the graphics looked nothing at all like the splash screen, the gameplay being instead state of the art early 1990's shaded polygon models. One outstanding innovation for the time was the inclusion of virtual cockpits with padlock view.

AboutEF 2000 first saw the light of day (a gloomy Scandinavian day at that! ) in 1995. It's roots lay in F-29 Retaliator and TFX but it went much, much further, breaking new ground in combat flight fidelity. From engine start, sorry, I mean TWO engine starts, you knew this was a new kind of flight sim experience. Taxiing quickened the pulse as the Eurofighter bobbed and bounced on its suspension. Sunlight glinted through the canopy, wheel brakes on, engine spooled up and the beast was straining at the leash.

"Brakes off and the tyres rumble, 120 knots and the dragon leaps into the air."
Ode to EF 2000 - MiGMan, 1999.

AboutEnemy Engaged: Apache vs. Havoc had arguably the most successful modelling of dynamic battle environments ever seen on a PC in the 1990's. It featured not one, but two of the premier Helicopter Gunships, created in stunning detail and placed in dynamic combat environments. The world of EECvH is so dynamic and interesting that it invites you to get in there and look around, beyond the attraction of flying missions. It really set a gold standard for this kind of sim environment that has still not been matched some 20 years later.

AboutWith this flight sim classic Microprose continued their tradition of creating sims which you could live in for months or even years, never getting bored. European Air War recreated the epic west European air battles which helped change the course of World History 1939 - 1945. Every aspect of this sim was superb, from the graphics and sounds to the atmospheric interfaces.

AboutThe Software Toolworks is an established developer of games: board, simulation, adventure. They needed a flight sim in their catalog, and Particle Systems did for them. The game was called Evasive Action, a curious choice in 1994, when flight sims were on the rage. Evasive Action proposed four different scenarios: 1917: The Great War, 1942:WWII, The Air Dominance Era, 2064: Space Combat.

AboutF1Tornado was released in 1990 for the Sinclair Spectrum. Once of the intro screens, curiously, shows a profile view of an F-4 Phantom II.

AboutF-117A Stealth Fighter has been referred to as "the mother of all sims" due to the many innovations it presented and the atmospheric way the sim is presented. It set standards of game-play which have probably never been exceeded.The sim was a major enhancement and re-release of F-19 (1988) by Sid Meier. F-117A runs very well on a 386 and is a "thinking person's sim" emphasising tactical thinking over reflexes.

AboutThe opening scenes to this 1990 flight sim from Activision are an accurate time capsule! The PC hardware of the day was only capable of displaying a limited number of polygons and colours, and the sound made good use of the latest sound card technology. Note that in the game you could also fly in cockpit view.

AboutF-15 by Janes had to be the strike fighter sim of the Millenium! Although it does have a formidable Air to Air capability in terms of Radar and ordnance, the F-15E is about half way down the ladder in manoeuverability... not a dogfight machine! But for fans of the Strike Aircraft community 1998 was hog heaven! Fans initially thought the F-15E as modelled was a woefully under-powered simulation, but pilots of the a/c confirmed the flight model was actually quite accurate.

AboutF-15 Strike Eagle III was a ground breaking simulation of the premier Strike Fighter and one of Microprose's greatest achievements. It was also one of the few sims that enabled two people to fly in the same aircraft over a network, in this case as pilot and Weapons Systems Operator.

AboutBoasting one of the most advanced flight models seen in a consumer flight sim. F-16 Aggressor unfortunately had it's development cut short.

AboutThis sim continued the legendary legacy of Tornado and brought it into the age of 3DFX graphics. Also released as iF-16.

AboutThe box art shows an F-16, unlike the splash screen which shows an imaginary AV-8B with twin tails!

AboutF-16 Multi Role Fighter by Novalogic combined a lightning quick graphics engine with accessible gameplay.

AboutF22 Air Dominance Fighter by Digital Image Design was the most extensive attempt to recreate the modern air combat environment seen on a PC.

AboutNotable Features Edward Lerner also wrote Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer.

AboutFollow up to Novalogic's best selling F-22 Lightning II.

AboutFirst in Novalogic's successful and fast paced F-22 series.

AboutNovalogic's first F-22 sim from the era of DOS and pre-3DFX.

AboutTotal Air War (TAW) is an aptly-named product. More than a combat flight simulator, it offers a strategic component based on modern air warfare theories first applied in the 1991 Gulf War. he strategic component is based on modern air warfare theories first applied in the 1991 Gulf War and developed by Col. John Warden III. It proposed a 5 ring theory of strategic targeting: 1 – Leadership, 2 - Key Production, 3 – Infrastructure – 4 - Population – 5- Fielded Forces. In addition to a detailed simulation of the F-22 fighter, TAW simulates a near-future war in the Red Sea region (northeast Africa and Saudi Arabia). It does so many things so well, that the player could easily concentrate on any of several single aspects of the sim and still find a lot of depth and fun.

About The graphics were detailed by the standards of the day, with cities, bridges, roads, islands, mountains and moving vehicles.

AboutGraphic Simulation's F/A-18 3.0 sim set new standards of fidelity and was playable on an average PC! It was actually released on Mac first, unusual for flight sim nowadays but back then Mac's had better graphics capabilities than PC's.

AboutKorea was one of the most realistic flight sims around 1n 1997 and it ran very well on a modest (Pentium) system. Royal Australian Air Force pilots regard this sim as a very accurate portrayal of the Hornet flight model. The flight model was one of the most fluid around and energy management in a dogfight became a desperate necessity! This sim was worth buying just for the in-game training tutorials. The Hornet was conceived from the word go as a dual-role aircraft, hence the designation F/A-18, which means Fighter-Attack. It was meant to supplement the role of the F-14 Tomcat, providing shorter range Air defense and to totally replace the A-7 Corsair and A-6 Intruder.

This sim reflects the dual role with an incredible array of Air-to-Ground weapons and systems. It was an updated and 3DFX enabled version of F/A-18 3.0.

AboutThis sim demanded your full attention. It detected you were not giving full attention... and then turned around and bit you hard! The computers did their best to fly the plane where you pointed it, but couldn't rescue you from gross errors of judgement like my full loops at low altitude! From a hard-core point of view I like this... it forced you to correct sloppy habits and get into the checklist mentality.. getting into a "landing state of mind" when landing... not dwelling on the fantastic dogfight you just had / didn't have. This indeed is the essence of creating an immersive sim!

AboutAn iconic flight simulator, Falcon 3.0 pushed the boundaries of air combat sims. It had all the features anyone could dream of at the time and the gameplay was riveting, with dynamically generated missions. It was also demanding on hardware, needing a 486 with a maths co-processor to run the "High-Fidelity Flight Model".

AboutA complex, real time, multiplayer Air and Ground War sim modelling the behaviour of over 10,000 entities and high fidelity modelling of the F-16 flight model and all avionics. This sim originally shipped to the public in 1998 with a 600 page operating manual. It was the culmination of a series started in 1980 by Gilman Louie, who now creates similar sims for the CIA. The Falcon 4.0 code has been enhanced by groups of enthusiasts and professionals to model 3 marques of the F-16, the ACMI and a weapons modelling has been upgraded, and it was republished as Falcon 4 Allied Force in 2005. Falcon 4.0 was probably the most ambitious air combat sim ever attempted, with a full scale war on the Korean peninsula being modelled. From a problematic beginning - with several patches released before the development team was disbanded by Hasbro to a glorious maturity with user supported development, Falcon remains an iconic sim.

AboutStrike Aces was also titled 'Fighter Bomber' was released in 1990 on the Atari ST, Commodore Amiga and PC. It was published by Activision and Accolade. The sim was set in a bombing competition inspired by Gen. Curtis LeMay's training events. It featured an unusual mix of flyable aircraft: F-4 Phantom , F-15E Strike Eagle, F-111 Aardvark, MiG-27 Flogger, RAF and Luftwaffe Tornado and the Saab Viggen.

AboutOne of the very first Russian authored sims to reach the western market. The sim had good scenarios, a variety of aircraft and was oriented towards multiplayer. The graphics requirements proved too much for my hardware (this was pre 3DFX) and my copy ended life as a hangar queen.

AboutFighters Anthology brought the DOS sims US Navy Fighters, Marine Fighters, Advanced Tactical Fighters, NATO Fighters and the Windows sim USNF '97 into one collection under Windows. It gave you over 100 different aircraft types to fly! It was the culmination of an ambitious series which bought hours of fun to flight sim fans the world over. A great introductory sim series. It was extremely ambitious in scope and I for one spent many hundreds of hours in the virtual skies of this series. The method of presenting flight information in user defined windows still hasn't been improved on 10 years since the series started. The reference CD is worth the price alone.

AboutOne of the crowning achievements in the Golden Decade of flight sims which presaged the fluidity and detail we would take for granted in the years ahead.

AboutA high fidelity sim of Naval and Navy Air Operations set in the early 2000's.

AboutFleet Defender, released in 1994 by Microprose, was the most thorough treatment of Carrier Fleet Defense ever seen to that date on a personal computer. The graphics were VGA 320 x 200 and based on the F15 Strike Eagle III graphics engine. This sim gets about as much detail as it's possible to get out of VGA.

About"Flight Commander 2 (FC2) is not really a flight simulator at all ... but rather a turn-based, tactical, jet-age air combat war game. So what is FC2 doing in the Flight Sim Museum? It's here because it shares many of the elements of combat flight simulators, and appeals to many of the same people who enjoy flight sims."

AboutFlight of the Intruder, released in 1991, is one of the classic combat flight sims of all time! It was developed by two teams, one in the USA and one in the UK. Flyable aircraft were the A-6 Intruder, F-4 Phantom, MiG-21 - this was the first time I got to fly a MiG-21! I remember flying head-to-head against my brother - he in the F-4 Phantom and myself in the MiG-21. Somehow he could always tell which aircraft was piloted by me despite my best efforts to send in the drones first! Until Falcon 3.0 was released, Flight of the Intruder led the pack in features. I remember getting FOTI for the Atari ST, sometime after I came across Falcon, and being amazed at the depth of the simulation, especially the mission planning options.

AboutFlying Nightmares was eagerly awaited for years. Well, at least I was waiting for! It was set to be an evolution of "SVGA AV8B Harrier Assault", with more detail in the Real time Strategy elements. There was an excellent version released for the Apple Mac... but not PC!

AboutCollection containing four titles by Digital Integration: F-16 Fighting Falcon, F-16 Fighting Falcon Afghanistan Campaign, Hind, Apache Longbow.

AboutGunship 2000 was an Apache Gunship sim released in 1991 by Microprose. As usual with their products, a strong sense of atmosphere was maintained by seamless menu screens and music. You could also fly the A H-1 Cobra, OH-58D Kiowa Warrior, MD 530MG, UH-60 Blackhawk, RAH-66 Comanche and AH-64B Apache Longbow. 1998: "If you only have a 386 and want some exciting chopper action then get this!"

About"You'll never get closer to the real thing. Your only other option would be to join the Air Force". So sayeth the box blurb from Microprose's 1992 Harrier Jump Jet sim. In the early 90's PC's had finally come into their own as games machines, with Sound Cards and powerful CPU's of the 386 variety! Harrier Jump Jet pushed the machines of the day with it's smooth rolling terrain. Those were the days! A 270 page manual printed on glossy stock and well bound in a size ideal for throne room reading. As well as heaps of tables detailing air-to-ground weapon effectiveness there was diagram after diagram on air combat manoeuvres. Not to mention the 3 full - colour maps!

AboutHind campaigns were based in Korea, Afghanistan and Kazakhstan. The flight model felt very smooth and responsive. All in all, Hind is one of the shining lights in the firmament of combat flight sims.

AboutHomeworld is a Real Time Strategy game set in space, with full 3D combat modelled.

AboutiF-16 by Digital Integration (1997) iF-16 was developed by Digital Integration and published by Interactive Magic in 1997. The fact that this sim was also released as F-16 Fighting Falcon had me confused for quite a while. But that's just me!

AboutThe graphics were of the first generation of sims that used 3DFX cards and satellite mapping techniques.

AboutAn arcade style game which looked spectacular in 3DFX. The Harrier featured prominently throughout.

About"... one of the first flight simulators to ever feature 3D terrain, utilising the powerful new ARM processors of the day. Interdictor 2 was built with a complete set of proprietary object and world building tools, which later went on to find a life of their own as Flight Sim Toolkit.’" - from guildford.games/developers/simis

AboutIAF was an utter blast with just the right balance of accessibility and challenge. Recreated the 6 Day War (1967), the Yom Kippur War (1973) and contained a second CD ROM featuring the 50th anniversary of the IAF. The ability to change aircraft during a mission turned out to be a real fun factor accelerator. Highly recommended.

About"It is hard for me to be as negative as I'm being with the (to my knowledge) only flight sim made in Spain, but the love for air combat and good gameplay prevails over patriotic feelings. Let's say J44SE is a good idea badly done, that died of sheer ambition: its 3D engine would work well for sports or racing games, but it's not suitable for an 'serious' flight sim." - Francisco J. Campos

About"As far as I know, this was the only computer simulation based on the Lightning aircraft. Had it been fully developed much earlier, it might have been a useful training aid for the RAF. It could have helped ground radar operators and controllers appreciate the pilots problems, etc." | Jet Pilot was a high fidelity air combat sim developed and published in 1996 by Vulcan Software for the Commodore Amiga platforms.

About"September 8, 1998. KESMAI'S JET WARRIOR - VIETNAM, the latest installment in the legendary Air Warrior flight simulator series will recreate the aircraft and campaigns of the Vietnam Conflict."

AboutJetfighter FullBurn was a standalone expansion of Jetfighter III. It had Russian and U.N. Forces, and you could fly for either side. It continued the Jefighter tradition of fast and furious action within a storyline. Four CD's with lots of full-motion video in the campaigns added to the atmosphere and sense of a storyline. Campaigns were set in the Nordic states and the terrain corresponded impressively closely to real-life operational navigation charts (ONC). Verdict: very atmospheric and a lot of fun.

AboutFluid flight modellling and carrier landings combined with dogfighting in the F-22 and YF-23 made Jetfighter II an incredibly popular combat flight sim.

AboutJetFighter III, released in 1997 was probably the last of the great DOS Combat Flight Sims. It was one of the first to support the 3DFX chipset and portrayed very detailed terrain... but still ran at a playable speed! The Navigation and Weapon systems were simple in operation so you could concentrate on turnin' and burnin'.

AboutProbably the first sim to feature the F-35 as the main player aircraft.

AboutBelonging to a small group of flight sims that gave you real-time tactical control of a campaign, the sim used the same graphics engine as AV-8B Harrier Assault except that it only ran in 320 x 300 resolution. This was hard to understand as the campaign system and other features were pretty much the same.

AboutSporting what was probably the most detailed low level environment ever seen in a flight sim, the sim looks fantastic and should have been a flagship product for the publisher. Sadly it was released without fanfare and at a budget price in April 2000. Unfortunately an early build of the code appears to be the one shipped to consumers.

AboutKnights of the Sky was a World War I air combat sim released in 1990 by Microprose.

AboutThe cockpit is simple looking now, but in 1990 it was state of the art! You could configure the MFD's to your taste as well. You could fly the Apache, Blackhawk, Osprey or the LHX. The Boeing Osprey VTOL which was featured in the novel "Hammerheads" by Dale Brown . This was the only simulation of the Osprey until the year 2000.

AboutLongbow from Janes was released in 1996 and remains possibly the most immersive simulation of the AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopter.

AboutLongbow 2 has a more sophisticated campaign engine than Longbow, giving you the ability to preview Allied missions, alter waypoints and arming and select which choppers will be flown.

AboutMarine Fighters was an add-on pack to US Navy Fighters. It added 4 new player aircraft and a campaign set in the Kurile Islands. Marine Fighters was an add-on pack to US Navy Fighters. It added 4 new player aircraft and a campaign set in the Kurile Islands.

AboutMayday! Mayday! is an expansion pack for Microsoft Flight Simulator '98 released in 1999 by Take 2 Interactive and created by John Waller. Overall this is a very well presented package with generous supporting material. It is made more immersive with the voice-overs. Engaging in this kind of directed activity in MSFS 98 gives a sense of purpose to your flights and creates a sense of urgency, especially when you are responding to "Mayday! Mayday!".

AboutBased on the popular Sci Fi mech warrior board game franchise this first foray into PC games was a challenging RTS style implementation.

AboutMegafortress was based on the novel "Flight of the Old Dog" by Dale Brown.

AboutAdd-on to Falcon 3.0 which enabled you to fly head to head MiG-29 vs. F-16 as well as containing full campaigns for the MiG-29. A good snapshot of 3-D modelling in the early 1990s.

AboutIn 1990 the MiG-29 had only just been revealed to the west at the Farnborough Airshow. It seemed to be a sexy mystery machine which could perform spectacular manoeuvers such as the "tailslide" and "cobra". Despite only having 6 missions, this sim bought countless hours of fun to flight sim fans on multiple platforms.

AboutPrior to 1990 you were flat out finding a picture or even an "artist’s impression" of a MiG-29. Suddenly in Novalogic’s MiG-29 Fulcrum you could go online and fly the plane with or against other pilots in real time. This was a very popular sim with simplified avionics which gave thousands of people the chance to try air combat tactics as taught to the pros, and see if they worked as advertised Flying on-line you could use voice communications to facilitate team tactics. Short multiplayer scenarios were won by destroying key enemy communications and infrastructure. Battle damage and asymmetric thrust were modelled. The sim provided a quick way to get an appreciation of the different design philosophies in Soviet aircraft. Examples of differences in instruments were the combined AOA/G meter and the NAV displays. You also had to think in metric! (Outside the former Soviet Union the standard system of measurement in aviation is Imperial). The sim ran as smooth as silk on Pentium 233MMX with 64 MEG of RAM. ( No 3D accelerator) and looked great. With a Banshee card the framerate seemed to double and the object detail is spectacular. Smoke trails are thicker, and the framerate doesn't seem to slow even at 1024 x 768 resolution.

AboutA PC re-release of MiG-29 Fulcrum by Domark with updated menus and more content.

AboutMiG Alley is a simulation of Air Combat operation in the Korean War June 1950 to January 1951. MiG Alley achieved very close to a perfect blend of action and graphical realism as a simulation of the air war in the Korean conflict. In November 2001 Rowan released the source code, so expect the sim to keep developing in the hands of dedicated fans.

AboutMicrosoft's first foray into combat flight sims is a class act. This sim combines the famous attention to detail seen in Microsoft Flight Simulator 98 with photo-realistic scenery generation and challenging missions. The missions are full of action and the photo-realistic scenery adds to the adrenaline rush whether you're in a dogfight at 5,000 feet or strafing a train at 50 feet! By designing an open architecture sim Microsoft have encouraged 3rd party developers and there are already custom aircraft and missions proliferating on the net.

AboutPart of the most popular combat sim franchises in the 1990s, NATO Fighters had the biggest line-up of flyable aircraft ever seen in a combat sim to that time.

AboutNavy Strike was developed by Empire and published in 1995. It was a DOS based sim released which combined Strategy and piloting.

About"The game features first-person views from the aircraft cockpit, as well as from cameras mounted on remotely controlled weapons. The views are rendered in flat-shaded polygons. The aircraft are equipped with heads-up displays as well as working instrument panels."

AboutRichard Leszczynski, who provided the scan, had a valid question: "Why the F-14 on an advertisement for a Harrier sim?"

AboutAdded flyable aircraft, objects, scenery and bases to Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator (1998). There was also a downloadable version available for Microsoft Combat Flight Sim 2.

AboutProflight was the first flight sim I had seen since the Apple ][ in 1982. I had bought an Atari ST to arrange and print music for my string quartet and included in the package was a demo of this amazingly fluid sim, running at 600 x 400 pixels (in monochrome). There began my true flight sim addiction.

AboutOne of the earliest SVGA sims. Flyable aircraft were the Spitfire, Hurricane, Messerschmidt Bf-109, Messerschmidt Bf -110, Heinkel He-111 and Dornier Do-117. I had an Atari ST at the time and the sim was at least as good (probably better) than the PC version!

AboutWW I dogfighting, a campaign of over 40 missions and the ability to fly 33 different aircraft made this a very successful sim.

AboutOne of the first 3D flight sims to take advantage of the 3DFX Voodoo graphics accelerator cards, which were new technology in 1998. Red Baron 3-D is an engrossing recreation of the air wars over France in WW1. The style of presentation can't fail to educate as it entertains. With British, American, French and German services to fly in and a full complement of planes it represents hours of flying fun.

AboutOne of the first air combat flight sims to use the brand new 3DFX graphics accelerator technology.

AboutFreeware sim.

AboutThe NATO codename for the Sturmovik is FrogFoot. Who picks these names? I know, a committee. Ian Boys tells me that the Russian codename Sturmovik translates as The Assaulter or The Attacker and is used both of the Su-25 (and earlier the IL-2) in particular and of ground attack aircraft in general. The Su-25 has been sadly neglected by game designers. The next one appeared as a footnote in Janes' NATO Fighters. Hands up all those who want a new Su-25 sim !! ... mmm, not probably enough unfortunately, considering we can't even get an A-10 Warthog sim, and that aircraft is a household name compared to the Frogfoot. This sim probably runs well on a 386, it screams along on a 486 or above. You'll need a utility such as mo'slo to run it on a Pentium. - MiGMan (ca. 1999)

AboutStrike Commander was a revolutionary flight sim and one of the all-time best selling. The strong story line and role-playing elements meant that it's appeal extended far beyond that market segment whose main interest lay in the simulation aspects.

AboutSu-27 Flanker was designed by a team of Russian programmers to run on 386 and low end 486 machines. The project was taken on by SSI and revised to SVGA graphics resolution. The Russian designers didn't have access to the faster PC's, and as a result their code was very efficient and it ran very smoothly despite being state of the art! The" sim recreateds the Crimean peninsula in great detail and pits you, in the Su-27 Flanker, against the latest Russian and NATO aircraft, armour, ships and SAMs. All control surfaces move during flight and the attention to detail is extraordinary!"

AboutSu-35 was being developed by a Russian team of programmers.

About"Super AirCombat was the successor to AirCombat III. It was the first Windows version of Systemsoft's AirCombat series. It seems to fly by miracle force from another universe. The shape of level flight envelope is far different from real aircraft." - Satoshi "Bin" Hiranuma.

AboutThis was the first SVGA sim, which meant that instead of VGA graphics of 320 x 200 pixels, we now had 640 x 400. The visuals were similar to what we had previously only seen in military simulators and were rendered in a beautiful set of pastel colours. SVGA Harrier had immense replay value as the campaign never played the same twice, and it was entirely up to you as to how you won the ground war. Or didn't. SVGA Harrier had immense replay value as the campaign never played the same twice, and it was entirely up to you as to how you won the ground war. Or didn't. This was the first sim I connected to MiGMan's home-built cockpit, and I spend night after night flying it, in the dark and with a flight suit, helmet and nomex gloves!

AboutTeam Apache was a fun chopper sim which gave a real adrenaline rush as you flew nap-of-the-earth, (hopefully) avoiding enemy fire and pounding enemy locations with rockets. It was one of the earliest 3DFX sims and looked gorgeous. Brian Walker, a US Army helicopter pilot, was involved with the development.

AboutTFX is an acronym for 'Tactical Fighter Experimental'. When you look at the graphics available in the other early combat flight sims it is easy to see why TFX caused so much excitement on it's release. The flight model could be adjusted from 'arcade' to 'military' and play modes ranged from arcade levels to the "UN Commander" mode. As UN Commander you planned missions, selected the aircraft and flew the Eurofighter, F22 or F117 Stealth Fighter.The later versions run straight from CD Rom and in a DOS box under Windows '98. It will run very smoothly on a '486 and is strongly recommended for beginners.

AboutA good representative of the state of DOS, AMIGA and ATARI flight sims at the beginning of the 1990’s.

AboutTop Gun: Fire at Will was a light sim based on the movie starring Tom Cruise. It was originally released in 1995 then again in the Microprose "Powerplus" series in 1998. The sim introduces the player to basic concepts of Air Combat with plenty of commentary and advice coming from your back-seater and instructors.

AboutOverall a good sim for newbies, more experienced players will probably find it lacking in challenges and want more control over landings and takeoff's.

AboutOne of the all-time classic flight sims. The training missions covered every aspect of operating the Tornado and you were wise to work your way through them... this sim gave you more opportunities to "buy the farm" than most! Player aircraft were Tornado IDS (Interdiction/Strike) and Tornado ADV (Air Defense Variant).

AboutUltra Fighters was a futuristic Combat Sim set here on Planet Earth and released in 1999. Before you play you have to ask yourself, do you have The Right Stuff? In the year 2571 you might find out as a pilot with the Navco mercenary group your job is to rid the Solomon Islands of Zindo forces. Ultrafighters combines the feel and look of a space sim with clouds, hills, vehicles and buildings to attack. If a Space Sim is your style, you get the best of both worlds!

AboutUS Navy Fighters was first from the stable of Janes Combat Simulations. This sim was the successor to the wildly popular Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat and started a series that ran to the end of the 1990’s. It focussed naturally nough on US Navy operations, set in a hypothetical conflict of the future (1999) in which US forces help Boris Yeltsin. The campaign that shipped with it led you from the F-14 to a navalised F-22 and then to the Su-34 Flanker variant. Get an overview of the series in the Fighters Anthology exhibit. The combat focussed gameplay was enhanced by the atmospheric and user friendly interface. The ability to tweak most aspects of the sim from the graphics to mission waypoints and loadouts made you feel in control without overwhelming you with detail. It still remains a model of good interface design. The first mission of the Ukraine campaign remains for many fans a reminder of just how atmospheric a sim can be. Check out the videos, showing the entire first mission from briefings, through mission planning, arming, carrier takeoff in the F-14, intercept and carrier landing.

AboutThis CD ROM edition contained US Navy Fighters and the 1st official add-on, Marine Fighters.

AboutThe sequel to Israeli Air Force and another popular sim from Janes Combat Simulations.

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AboutRemastered Edition

AboutModelled the The Ardennes region in 1944. Integration of the reference material went a step further with a virtual museum being accessible within the sim. Like most Janes sims this one pushed the PC hardware available at the time of it's release (1998) to the limits. A year and a half down the track it ran very well on the average new machine - provided you had a 3D accelerator fitted of course!

About"YSFlight is a free, open-source multi-platform flight simulator, developed and published by Soji Yamakawa since 1999. Since its initial release, it has received annual updates, with the most recent stable version released in 2018." - Wikipedia