NATO Fighters

Part 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.

NATO required Advanced Tactical Fighters to run. It has since been ported to Windows 95 (yay!) and released as part of Fighters Anthology. (Check out my huge guide to these sims in the Fighters Anthology exhibit).

Player aircraft added to the ones already in Advanced Tactical Fighters lineup were:

This was the biggest line-up of flyable aircraft ever seen in a combat and has yet to be equalled.

Of course, to achieve this number, many aircraft shared cockpit art and there were a few boo-boos made in the aircraft data. I remember the F-111 having only 3,000 lbs of fuel as a notable gaffe... it actually holds 3,000 GALLONS ! (about 18,000 lbs).

Corrections to aircraft data and the ability to fly any aircraft had been available for a couple of years thanks to the work of 3rd party (fans) utilities that ran under Windows. (The sim ran in DOS).

In NATO Fighters you have to fight the Su-35, which has thrust vectoring and a rear firing air-to-air missile. With that back-firing missile you're not even safe from this vantage point!

On the other hand, wIth a loadout of 10 Air-to-Air missiles maybe it is safer than the front end! The Warsaw Pact always had the most interesting camouflage schemes in my opinion, and the sim reflects this.