1672: It’s Time to Take “Simulator” Back

On a whim, I downloaded a game called F-117A Nighthawk: Stealth Fighter 2.0 from retro gaming specialists Good Old Games the other day. This was the sequel to a game I used to play a whole bunch on the Atari ST, our main family computer back in the late ’80s to early ’90s — F-19 Stealth Fighter.

F-19 and F-117A are both the brainchild of Sid Meier, the legendary game designer who is most well-known for the Civilization series these days. Back in the ’80s and ’90s, though, Meier and his compatriots at MicroProse — a company which he co-founded — were specialists in the field of simulations of various kinds. And not just flight sims, either; notable early MicroProse titles included submarine simulator Silent Service and air traffic control simulation Kennedy Approach as well as the detailed but accessible jet fighter sims like F-15 Strike Eagle that the company was most well-known for.

That “accessible” part was an important part of the appeal of MicroProse games — even as a young child, I was able to pick up a joystick and happily fly a virtual F-15 or the non-existent F-19 (and its real-world counterpart the F-117A) without crashing, for the most part. (Landing was — and still is — troublesome, but it was ever thus.) And yet the games were packed with detail and options that allowed you to make the experience more realistic if you so desired — systems that could get damaged or fail in flight, more complex flight models, less forgiving physics models for landing and all manner of other goodies. In other words, they were games that both my young self and my confirmed propellerhead father could get something out of — although the latter often noted that SubLogic’s (and subsequently Microsoft’s) Flight Simulator series was considerably more “true to life” in numerous ways.

Booting up F-117A Nighthawk: Stealth Fighter 2.0 (which is a fancier version of F-19 Stealth Fighter rather than a completely new game in its own right) made me realise that a full-on, proper simulation like this is something of a rarity these days. Oh, sure, we still get the odd authentic simulator like Euro Truck Simulator and Farming Simulator, but for the most part, simulators aren’t what they used to be.

And I mean that literally: the definition (or usage, at least) of the words “simulator” and “simulation” have changed over time, and branched off in a couple of directions: first they were co-opted by social game developers to describe isometric-perspective clickfest non-games like FarmVille and CityVille and, more recently, they’ve been adopted in a humorous sense by games like Surgeon Simulator and Goat Simulator — games that are making a joke out of the fact that they bear little to no resemblance to reality whatsoever. (A joke that some might argue has gone a little bit too far now, but that’s not really what I want to get too hung up on right now.)

An honest-to-goodness flight simulator, though? A rare sighting — along with their closely related cousins, the space flight simulator. (In the latter case, we’re usually into the realms of pure science fantasy, but good space flight sims treat their subject matter with as much respect as those games that are firmly based in the real world. See: X-Wing, Tie Fighter, FreeSpace.) And that’s a bit sad, really, because surely with the power of modern systems we could do some absolutely kick-ass flight sims these days.

Flight sims were, during the ’90s and early ’00s, showcase titles for powerful computers. Fast processors were needed to crunch the numbers for increasingly realistic flight models, and the dawn of the 3D accelerator video card age brought us texture-mapped visuals that were forever pursuing the “photo-realistic” ideal. No-one ever quite managed it, but there were more than a few games that got pretty close — and even when they didn’t, there were plenty of games that managed to suspend one’s disbelief enough through atmosphere and a feeling of authenticity to make you feel like you were really sitting in the cockpit heading off on a deadly mission into enemy territory.

F-117A is a prime example of this. Its visuals consisting entirely of flat-shaded polygonal graphics with occasional dots appearing on land and sea to give a (surprisingly convincing) feeling of speed and altitude, the game nonetheless remains somewhat terrifying thanks to its stealth mechanics. You need to fly under radars and make sure you don’t do anything that will attract attention — no firing off weapons unless you’ve reached your target; no hitting the afterburners to get where you’re going a bit quicker. The little gauge in the cockpit that reflected your visibility to enemy radar — a nod to accessibility rather than something I for a moment believe is present in a real F-117A cockpit — became something you’d glance furtively at before returning your attention to the occasional radar “blips” you’d see on the cockpit’s multi-function displays. You’d lower the nose and drop altitude still further, terrifying a few Libyan farmers as you flew past a few hundred feet above their heads. Then, when your target was in range, you’d lock on, open the bay doors, release your payload and then get the hell out of there before pursuers arrived on the scene.

I miss that sort of experience. I know I can still have it with F-117A, but it would be awesome to see what that game would look like had it been made today. I wonder if we’ll ever see a resurgence of this kind of game? It’s not beyond the realm of possibility; after all, traditional PC roleplaying games, point-and-click adventures and all manner of other genres have made successful comebacks in recent years — I think flight sims are long overdue their time in the sun.