Flight of the Intruder

Flight of the Intruder was the next title released by the same team who put FALCON together. For the Amiga, this sim was impressive regarding detail and realism - but I found it had several bugs, many of which caused the game to quit. If were willing to persevere, you could get some very tough aircombat action - the sort that when you eventually got back on the carrier, you felt like you had achieved something.

You had the choice of flying either the Grumman A-6 Intruder or the mighty McDonnell Douglas F-4J Phantom. Both cockpits were made up from several views, the usual side and rear quarter views ( no looking directly behind you in either of these two jets ) and also the main panel, which was spread over two screens.

The cockpits were fabulous - lots of analogue instruments, huge warning light panels and armament selection panels with more switches and choices than anyone had previously thought possible (in a sim). In true style and keeping to the time period of the sim ( late 60's early 70's Vietnam war ) the HUD was more like a WWII style gunsight with no data, only a pipper/recticle.

The reticle was fixed - no LCOS, although for dropping freefall bombs you had to set the sight to the correct mil setting ( which moved the recticle up or down the glass panel ) from a chart included in the manual and then initiate the attack run at the required speed/altitude/dive angle and distance from target ( not easy with SAM's and AAA coming up at you! ).

You could identify the calibre of the AAA by the colour and shape of the flak explosions!

The main structure of the sim was split into the following : you could do single missions in both the A-6 or F-4, for which there was a lengthy selection. Most missions would see you flying with at least your wingman, and on many the missions would be made up of multiple flights, using both A-6 and F-4's. One of the most impressive features was the ability to jump between friendly aircraft, no matter what type - very useful if you've used up all your stores, but still need that extra bomb to take out that SAM or bridge.

One of the most disappointing things was the AI of the friendly flights - especially the A-6's, as they hardly ever seemed to drop any ordnance on target, however, they were capable of defending themselves against SAM launches ( which was one thing I suppose ).

The F-4's AI was a little better, though still lacking in the air-ground scene, they would usually have a crack at any MiG's in the area. Once you had completed one of the single missions, you would be awarded a mission patch to go on your flight suit.

Another way of adding a bit of colour to the suit was by landing on the wrong carrier ( there were 2 or 3 carriers on station ). By doing this, your suit would get decorated with various colours as a reward for your error - this is something that actually happened during the war on some carriers, although it was the aircraft that tended to get the new paint work, not the pilot!

There was also the "campaign" mode, where you had complete control over the mission planning, target selection and aircraft and crews.

For the wingmen / other flights, you had a selection of personalities you could choose from, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. They were a selection of real life US Navy crews ( one F-4 team was the famous 'Duke' Cunningham and Willie Driscoll, the only Navy Aces of the entire war ), while others were characters from the book Flight of the Intruder on which the game was based.

As the crews did more missions, their abilities increased, but you also had to keep an eye on their fatigue, as to many missions would have an adverse effect. Sadly ( another bug ) I found out early on that the skills of the AI crew personalities were reset every time you re-loaded the sim.

The main workings of the campaign were great, an amazing selection of targets, including airfields, SAM and AAA sites, radar ( GCI ) stations, docks, boats, convoys, POL storage units, HQ buildings, factories and many more. However, again it seemed that the memory of the campaign was very short, and the items you destroyed in one mission were back again with a vengeance in the next.

A couple of potentially good ideas were the inclusion of having the mission taped, so you could use it as de-briefing material, and also the ability to take photos of targets, again for use in the briefings / de-brief - both of which could be stored on floppy disks for future reference. Good ideas yes, but somewhat made redundant by the fact that the targets would be alive again when you next took off.

The choice of weapons was huge, the only things missing were nukes and napalm.

The Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles were real heartbreakers as per reality with a very low %PK. One very surprisingly effective weapon in the air-air arena were the Zuni unguided rockets. After a bit of experience, I always made sure that both A-6's and F-4's had Zuni's, not only for an effective self defence against SAM and AAA sites, but also as a potent AA weapon.

Another piece of external kit for you to use was the ECM jammer pods. Great idea to include, but they had a very strange result. If you had a pod and activated it, you were immune to SAMs - period. However, you could loadup both the A-6 and F-4 full of ECM pods, enough jamming power you would think to protect a small strike package.

Sadly not. The only way to be protected was to carry your own. I don't recall ever having any random failures in this sim, only ones induced by enemy action, but it did tend to be one extreme to the other. On the rare occasion you got slight damage ( usually cannon hits from a MiG ), the norm was an engine out or radar failure - it was very unusual to find anything else going tits-up. The usual was if you got hit, it was terminal. Enter another bug.

Once hit and going down out of control, you were dead - end of story, game over.

The reason being that the sim would never allow you to eject and survive. You did have a key combination for eject, and eject you did, but no matter what attitude you bailed out, you were guaranteed never to return. Your only hope was to jump into another allied jet ( if any were left ).

As you have guessed by now, what promised to be a superb sim was dogged by bugs - most of which were unavoidable. But don't get me wrong, when this sim worked, it worked well and I loved it.

I think it was just a victim of below par play testing and basically rushing to get the game out on the shop shelves. I never played this sim on any other machine, so I can't say if this holds true for any other format, but I think if they could have held fire on the release for a month or maybe two to work on zapping those faults ( even just fixing the campaign to make it dynamic and the ejecting death problem ), this sim would have been among the very best ever seen and flown on the Amiga.