The Classic PC Gaming Era (1977-1989) -Flight and Combat Simulator Games
Flight sims and combat sims are two of the oldest genres in PC gaming, and they produced some of the most technically impressive games of the 1980s.
In a conventional genre classification of PC games, the term “flight simulator” has traditionally been used to define any sort of game where the player flies around in an aircraft with a view from the cockpit. There is a practical reason for this – mechanical and electronic flight simulators predate computers as actual training tools for pilots, and PC-based attempts to provide a similar experience have long been a cheap but accessible alternative compared to expensive dedicated training simulators.
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And yet when gamers talk about flight sims, they may be referring to:
General flight simulators, often with no specific missions or objectives, like Flight Simulator, Microsoft Flight Simulator or the Chuck Yeager games. Most of these focus on realism rather than arcade action and are thus regarded as being pure simulations
Combat flight simulators, also known as dogfighting games, like Falcon or Jet or any number of games based on a specific fighter model. These are often graded by their realism versus their arcade action qualities, but even many of the realistic games have contrivances to make them more accessible to players and less accurate to the actual experience
Space simulators, with their own branch of space combat simulators like Wing Commander or Star Wars: X-Wing. Beyond the distinction between realism and arcade action, there’s also the question of physics, which can be modeled after strict Newtonian principles or more contrived fantasy physics where spacecraft pitch, yaw and control motion and speed through thrust rather than momentum
Adjacent ideas like helicopter simulators, air traffic controller simulators, naval simulators or tank simulators, most of which tend to follow the conventions of combat flight simulators
Within the broader sim genre, the general flight simulator has long been a well-defined and specific subgenre focused on the less exciting (but more realistic) framework of allowing players to experience the joys of taking off, flying around real-world locations and then landing. General flight sims also tend to be the most likely to have a sandbox design where there are no objectives beyond the player’s personal enjoyment.
Combat sims, by contrast, tend to have more specific victory conditions as well as often including secondary or tertiary goals for players to accomplish during missions. They were also far more popular in the 1980s due to their replications of military aircraft and inclusion of popular scenarios.
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When mechanics, physics or combat focus aren’t enough to differentiate simulators, another very common method of classification involves comparing graphical styles. Traditional flight simulators have utilized vector-based graphics and polygons to provide truly three-dimensional worlds, but others have used 2D sprites that depict other planes or terrain from different angles to try to depict a greater level of detail. There’s also a big distinction in style between pure or realistic simulators, which attempt to replicate the actual experience of flying particular aircraft, and arcade simulators, which focus more on simplifying mechanics to focus on action and accessibility, despite potentially featuring recreations of actual aircraft.
But another way to look at simulators is through a historical lens, since many sims were heavily influenced by the games that came before them.
Flight simulators have existed in some form since the 1910s and have included computers since the 1960s, but these devices were created to train actual pilots and were far too expensive to be played as amusement games. In the arcades Sega’s 1970 electro-mechanical game Jet Rocket provided a game-oriented flight experience, quickly followed by several similar games like Bally’s Target Zero and Williams’s Flotilla. Jet Rocket involved flying night missions and launching missiles against ground targets and used a literal scrolling map (inside the cabinet) to provide its environment and some clever mirror trickery to place a seemingly three-dimensional fighter plane in the player’s view and to simulate attacks. It’s generally regarded as the first flight simulator game but could also perhaps be regarded as the first open-world sandbox game and the first action-adventure game!
The earliest purely video game flight and combat simulators can be found on mainframe computers. These include Silas Warner’s 1974 flight simulator Air Race, John Haefeli’s 1975 tank battling game Panther and Brand Fortner and Kevin Gorey’s 1975 combat flight sim Air Fight. There were also several rudimentary flight-based games available on the PC in the late 1970s including Instant Software’s 1979 Air Flight Simulation.
But the most influential early PC flight simulator was the 1979 A2FS1 Flight Simulator, developed by Bruce Artwick and Stu Moment and released through their newly-founded publisher subLOGIC. While it’s quite archaic by the standards of today, it was revolutionary for the time because rather than having players fly solely in the sky, it allowed players to fly a simulated Sopwith Camel over vector-based terrain. Later versions of the game were simply known as Flight Simulator or FS1, and they became the foundation for not one, but two important series that defined PC flight simulators for the 1980s.
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Microsoft licensed the game for the IBM PC and released it as Microsoft Flight Simulator in 1982, but it was more than a port; Artwick used the expanded capabilities of the 16-bit hardware to add in better graphics, more detailed terrain and more complex simulation overall as players were given the opportunity to fly a Cessna 182 plane. A major showcase feature was the game’s real locations, such as the starting point at the now-defunct Meigs Field airport in Chicago. In 1985, subLOGIC introduced expansion disks to fly other over locations in this game and in many of the related flight sims that followed. Microsoft Flight Simulator wound up being a particularly historic piece of software that even had its own operating system embedded in the code, enabling it to run on clones of the IBM PC standard. The software kept improving, too. Version 2.10 launched in 1984 to provide color support, and 1986’s version 2.13 added in EGA graphics and mouse support. In 1988, version 3 launched and added in a Learjet 25, multiplayer support and 16-color graphics, but it was really with version 4, launched in 1989, that the series truly became a major force, in no small part due to a 1990 add-on that allowed players to create their own aircraft and scenery.
As they continued to update Microsoft Flight Simulator, Artwick and Moment applied many of Microsoft Flight Simulator’s features to their 8-bit software, and 1983’s Flight Simulator II debuted on the Apple II impressively adding in most of the features from Microsoft Flight Simulator while featuring a Piper PA23-181 Archer II instead of a Cessna. But as subLOGIC brought Flight Simulator II to other hardware platforms such as the Commodore 64, Atari ST and MSX, Artwick continued to rebuild the game, adding in increasing sophistication and ensuring that each new release was something to celebrate. Even the 1986 version of Microsoft Flight Simulator released for the original Macintosh offered a significant upgrade in terms of overall features and visual fidelity (despite being in black and white).
Beyond those main titles, subLOGIC adapted its tools towards many other simulators, including 1985’s Jet (which featured the F-16 Fighting Falcon for land-based missions and the F-18 Hornet for sea-based missions), 1988’s Flight Simulator with Torpedo Attack (which put you in a Nakajima B6N Tenzan torpedo bomber), 1988’s Stealth Mission (which featured the F-19 Stealth Bomber, X-29 Experimental and F-14 Tomcat) and even 1989’s UFO (which allowed you to fly an otherworldly craft!). subLOGIC also licensed its technology to ActionSoft for a 1986 helicopter simulator called Thunderchopper. All of these games were compatible with the scenery disks, creating an incredible ecosystem of simulators that could be supported by the same pool of expansion content.
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But while subLOGIC’s games were certainly among the best general flight simulators available, MicroProse provided some stiff competition with several excellent combat flight sims in the 1980s, many of which were designed by (or based upon design ideas established by) famed game developer Sid Meier. These included 1982’s Hellcat Ace and Spitfire Ace, 1983’s Solo Flight, 1984’s F-15 Strike Eagle, 1988’s F-19 Stealth Fighter, 1987’s Project Stealth Fighter and the 1986 AH-64 Apache helicopter sim Gunship. MicroProse was also the king of naval submarine simulators, with the excellent 1985 game Silent Service (also designed by Meier) and 1988 game Red Storm Rising striking a fascinating balance between realism and fun.
Many other game publishers released at least one notable combat simulator during the 1980s. Accolade put out the popular Ace of Aces in 1986. Spectrum Holobyte released the classic submarine simulator Gato in 1984 and then established the incredibly realistic F-16 simulator series Falcon in 1987. Electronic Arts went for authenticity with the popular Chuck Yeager series in 1987 and released the fantastic F/A-18 Interceptor in 1988. Dynamix released A-10 Tank Killer and F-14 Tomcat in 1989. Even Activision churned out the mediocre Apache Strike on the Macintosh in 1987. Some efforts from lesser-known developers also caught gamers’ notice, such as Digital Integration’s 1985 helicopter simulator Tomahawk and 1989 F-16 Combat Pilot, Cosmi Corporation’s 1985 combat helicopter sim Super Huey UH-IX and Digital Image Design’s 1989 release F29 Retaliator.
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One series that would go on to have a major impact on the 1990s, however, came from a then-unlikely source – Lucasfilm Games, a developer more synonymous with cutting-edge action and adventure games than with simulators. After some surprising success with the hydrofoil sim PHM Pegasus and the follow-up naval action game Strike Fleet, Lucasfilm Games moved into developing combat flight simulators. Unlike other sim developers who were focused on capturing precise details about flying specific aircraft, game designer Lawrence Holland tried a different tactic for the simulator he was developing, focusing a little bit less on capturing the realism of flying a World War II-era plane and ramping up the feeling of being a pilot flying during that time. The result was the fantastic (and still very playable!) Battlehawks 1942, which offered players the chance to play as the US or the Japanese during four major conflicts. Though it was not the first game to do so, Battlehawks helped to popularize the use of scalable sprites for enemy planes instead of polygonal aircraft, giving the game a feeling a detail and realism that was missing from many sims of the era. Holland followed up with the similar and equally fantastic 1989 combat sim Their Finest Hour to focus on the conflict between the British RAF and the German Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain. Battlehawks 1942 and its sequels would also go on to inspire the 1990s space combat sim series Wing Commander as well as the Star Wars series that began with X-Wing and TIE Fighter. These space sims caused a seismic shift in the 1990s era of the genre and rendered many of the more serious combat simulators obsolete.
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Aside from airplanes and submarines, however, there were not many other distinctive simulators from the era. Dynamix’s 1988 game Abrams Battle Tank felt more like their earlier Arcticfox than a true simulator, and it wasn’t until Accolade’s 1988 release Steel Thunder and MicroProse’s 1989 game M1 Tank Platoon that fans of armored vehicles got a chance to sink their teeth into commanding and piloting a realistic platoon of tanks across 3D terrain.
On the space simulator front, a handful of games sought to prove that PC gaming could do more than provide arcade-style Lunar Lander games. Some of these titles included the 1986 Macintosh Spectrum Holobyte game Oribter, Starbyte Software’s 1986 strategy sim Space M.A.X., enhanced PC ports of Activision’s 1983 Atari 2600 game Space Shuttle: A Journey into Space and the very complex HESware 1985 release Project Space Station.
Beyond these simulators, there were a number of light combat games like Skyfox and Starglider that I’ve chosen to classify in other sections as first or third person action games rather than simulators because they aren’t really focused on modeling physics or real-world experiences so much as they’re focused on shooting things out of the sky. That isn’t to say that they weren’t tremendous fun, but it is to recognize that they were aimed at an entirely different audience.
As Our Series Continues…
In the coming weeks, we’ll talk about flight simulators, sports games, gameroom games, puzzle games, unusual games and so much more.
And while you’ll definitely see some titles from prominent North American publishers like Sierra On-Line, Infocom, Activision, Electronic Arts, Brøderbund, SSI, MicroProse, Lucasfilm Games, Epyx and Sir-Tech in the mix, you’ll also see references to games from the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Spain and Japan.
If you’ve missed the earlier entries in the series, which cover ASCII games, adventure games, wargames, strategy games and role-playing games, you can find the entire archive at https://greatestgames.substack.com.
Anything I don’t share here will be in my upcoming book, tentatively titled The Greatest Games You (Probably) Never Played Vol. 1. Subscribe to this newsletter so you won’t miss it!