F-16 Fighting Falcon

History of Falcon, the Simulator.

In 1984, Gilman Louie and Les Watts wrote F-16: The Real Dogfight Simulator for the MSX, a Japanese computer. From the outset, Gilman wanted players to be able to compete against each other in aerial combat. Les wrote the communications code to allow this.

On October, 14 1985, Gilman (CEO of Nexa Corporation, a software development firm) and a handful of other programmers began work on a two-year project to create the most realistic flight simulator to date on a personal computer. Meanwhile, Nexa merged with Colorado-based software distributor Spectrum Holobyte. The project resulted in the 1987 release of the revolutionary Falcon for the IBM and Macintosh computers."

I have downloaded an old game emulator and obtained the F-16 ROM that appears to be a version of this very early version of Falcon (notice the Nexa logo and the year 1985 on the splash screen). I've included some screenshots of the what is I guess the very beginnings of the long and prosperous Falcon lineage!