Hey friends, welcome to this episode of Retro Dogfight! In this episode, we’ll continue our MicroProse lovefest by looking at three early MicroProse classics, including:
These games are much beloved, early entries in MicroProse’s classic catalog, but were they beloved by us? You’ll have to listen to find out! 😉 Hint: Maybe yes, maybe no! 😉
Next time, we’ll continue our look at some earlier MicroProse titles — and some of my personal favorites — F-19 Stealth Fighter and F-117A Nighthawk: Stealth Fighter 2.0! I am particularly excited about this because F-19 is a seminal flight sim of mine. I just cannot wait to talk about these games!
So, thank you so much for listening, and enjoy the show!!
*Cover provided by MobyGames
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:08:19 — 46.9MB)
Great episode! Just learned about this podcast and am thrilled to hear some familiar voices. I remember Chase from the old Usenet group (though I always read his handle as “snakecharmer” or something like that), and of course everyone knows Denny. In its heyday, comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.flight-sim was the Studio 54 of gaming, except without the drugs, music, disco balls, and hot chicks. And everything was in ASCII text. But we were kings!
F-15 Strike Eagle was my first flight sim (I had it on the Apple II, which looked particularly rough). And yes, like most techno-forebears it’s hard to appreciate it except in pinch-faced academic way. But it was a Sid Meier design and it bears his genius for curating the right level of detail to capture the essence of a thing. For example, drop tanks. There is no mechanical reason to have drop tanks in a game that starts you in the air and has no landing mechanic. But fuel planning and the mission map (which showed you air defense sites) gave F-15 a sense of place and distance, at a time when a lot of vehicle simulators had you and your destination and nothing very real in between. Of course, there is barely any route planning and no real fuel planning in this game — but it was a statement that mission planning is a thing in this world. This seems obvious now (where technical detail is thoughtlessly piled on), but I think it was a real design choice in 1984. It could have been a dogfight game. But Sid Meier chose to make a fighter-bomber game (incidentally, years before the real F-15E Strike Eagle entered service).
I don’t think F-15 Strike Eagle quite cast the mold for Western feature design during the golden age — I think that honor goes to F-19 (and, in particular, its “target cam”, which annoyed me at the time but was brilliant). But, I also think there is no F-19 without F-15 Strike Eagle. FWIW, I read someplace that Sid Meier felt that he had said all he had to say about flight-sims in F-19, and never looked back. The hobby is poorer for his absence.
What a lovely comment, thank you. And yeah, I agree that there’d be no F-19 without F-15, but man, I found F-15 painful to play even back then.
At some point you guys mentiond the book “Gunship Academy” and that sprang a powerful memory. I recall it was one of the entries authored by the prolific Richard G. Mills. FYI: his books are available online, for free. (check FlightSimBooks.com).
Rather than a proper “strategy guide”, the book was a sort of a handbook, an introduction to the AH-64 (in the case of this peculiar title). Back in the day, when “Gunship” was published I was TEN and Mr. Mills’ books were instead intended for the a “young adult” reader, so they were exceptionally difficult to convince my parents to “please: I MUST have this book. I NEED IT”. At that time I was living in Italy with my parents, so I could only rely to one of my older cousins’ good heart to get me a copy (like: for Christmas). Tough luck. Eventually: I received an Amiga even before I could lay my hands on Mr. Mills’ book. That’s another story, but guys: your podcast is exceptionally good. It’s great and really, it takes me back to a very good place in my life.
I’ll be sure to add an entry for when you gents will cover EA’s F/A-18 Interceptor. That’s when I got “my wings”. Thank you gentlemen!
What a lovely comment! I discovered Gunship Academy only a few years ago, but had to own a copy once I learned about it. I now own all those books by Richard Sheffield (I thought it was Sheffield?). They’re all lovely reads, the F-19 book being my favorite.
I’m so happy we can help unearth such beloved memories for you. That’s such a part of the joy of making this show, and I thank you for your kind words!
Hi, I have found your podcast recently – in the intro you stated what I also agree to that while I understand and respect DCS/Falcon BMS and people who need max realism – I enjoyed the Microprose era games more and wholly agree with the quote you brought from Sid about too much realism in games. As for this episode I side with the opinion of the third host that started defending F-15 Strike Eagle around 4th minute and reminded that this sim is a father of all modern fighter jet sims.
I was about 10 years old, living in Poland so I couldn’t get this game from other sources than friends, so I didn’t have a chance
to read the original instruction – just some skimpy instructions in computer magazines (which also used pirated copies for reviews as those games simply weren’t sold in Poland as it was eastern bloc) – I didn’t find it too difficult, I was thrilled about all those features this game had like MFDs, different weapons, this NAV was brilliant for me. Idea that you start right in air, with enemy fighter nearby to practice dogfight and you didn’t need to land just be near airfield so no frustration with landings and timing between main events was compressed so game was action packed showed Sid’s genius in game design – to get people hooked into flight sims – it definietly hooked young me!
It was so much better as a gateway to sims than Fighter Pilot – which was difficult to land, didn’t have ground targets and air combat was even worse than in Hellcat Ace – I hated those sprite based enemies. I only wished that F-15 Strike Eagle had more 3D wireframe ground models instead simple triangles – just as it was in Tomahawk (Atari sadly didn’t have neither Gunship nor Project Stealth). F-15 hooked me into dream of flying so much that after many years I became real glider pilot and also hooked me in sims which later turned into passion for programming and landed me good career, so I was so thankfull to those early 8bit sims that started it all for me that I felt need to fill the Atari sims gap and actually make a better jet combat flight sim for Atari – that would not only had much richer 3D wireframe world with independently moving ground and air units, but also incorporate some ideas from modern sims – 3d guided missiles (no sprites enemies, missiles etc), switchable MFDs, procedural mission generator, handcrafted campaign and much more – even patrolling AWACS providing larger radar scan – after over 2 years I just recently finished it – it is called F-16 Falcon Strike (current version is 2.0.1) – it is free, has home page with manual and there are some tutorial videos on youtube. Thanks for the podcast.
Oh gosh, I’m so sorry I didn’t see this sooner. I didn’t get an email about it! What a lovely comment! And F-16 Falcon Strike looks amazing. Thank you!!