Project Stealth Fighter

Microprose's F19 Stealth Fighter was an absolute corker - if you were willing to wait for the thing to load. It was a BIG game by Spectrum standards, and by far the most complex. You had trouble believing that it was made by the same guys who did F-15 Strike Eagle IF-15 Strike Eagle I !!!!!

The F19 was at the time what was being passed off as the mysterious Stealth Fighter, which was unveiled later to be the F-117A Nighthawk Stealth Fighter. The cockpit was a dazzling array of CRT displays, a couple of them were MFD's.

You could fly missions in Libya, Persian Gulf, North Cape and Central Europe. The amount of weapons available was immense - everything from Mk82 slicks to CBU's, LGB's and Fuel Air Explosives.

You had several levels of combat going from covert, where stealth was a must, upto all out conventional war, where every target in enemy territory was a good target! You had so many different missions, each with a primary and secondary objective, each mission was generated at random. I can't remember getting the same set of targets more than a couple of times whilst flying it.

The enemy airforces were fabulous - each had several different aircraft and not just the usual fighters - transports, AWACS and patrol birds were about too. And you also had allied aircraft about too, so you had to be careful of a friendly fire incident!

Full take-off and landings were modelled including carrier ops. You had special missions too, such as recce, dropping supplies to special forces and picking up secret packages from temporary dirt strip airfields.

Dogfighting was a real buzz and you could easily find yourself in a scrap with 4 or 5 enemy jets in one go. The HUD was mindblowing with it's detail - in fact from my experience, it was less complex on the Amiga version! It was also great to be able to keep a log book and get promotions and medals.

I made it through to the 99 missions, Brig.Gen with every medal including the CMOH. Another first was the idea of EMCON and radar signatures. These had to be kept under control or you would be detected by the enemy.

F19 was the last sim I brought for the Spectrum, but I enjoyed it so much, it was also the first sim I brought for my Amiga - and I wasn't disappointed with that either!