#oneaday Day 1095: Up in the air

I'm excited that old MicroProse sims are coming back to PC via Steam, via some sort of unholy alliance between New MicroProse and whatever the heck Atari is this week. Ultimately I don't really care too much about the circumstances — I do care that these are easy and convenient ways to get some classics up and running on modern machines, even if the default DOSBOX settings for Dogfight appear to be the equivalent of running the game on a modest 386. (At least you can bump the speed up easily!)

So far I've spent a bit of time with Solo Flight — you can read about my experience here —  which is one that we never played back in the day. Although we enjoyed MicroProse flight sims in general, my dad was an absolute Flight Simulator II loyalist and refused to believe that Solo Flight would come anywhere near Sublogic's classic. Trying Solo Flight for the first time recently, I can confirm that he was, of course, absolutely correct — but that's not to say that Solo Flight doesn't have its appeal.

Solo Flight is what I'd maybe describe as a civil aviation game rather than a true simulator. Between the third-person view, the massively condensed maps, the score-based Mail Pilot mode and the fairly forgiving flight model, it's not especially realistic — though it does present something rather different from MicroProse's jet fighter sims of the period, and it does at least make attempts to reflect at least a few elements of a realistic flight model.

It's exceedingly primitive by modern standards… but there's something undeniably fun about it, even in its putrid CGA incarnation. I can't quite pin down what it is; it just sort of feels nice to play. And I can't really chalk that up to nostalgia, either, having never played the thing until recently. Whatever it is, I certainly don't regret spending a fiver on this crusty old flight sim.

Looking forward to trying out Harrier Jump Jet, as that's from the interesting transitional period where MicroProse was leaving behind 16-bit all-in-one computers like the ST and Amiga in favour of devoting themselves to MS-DOS PCs. It's another game that I'm not familiar with from back in the day, though if it's anything like its rough contemporaries I have no doubt I'll enjoy it. I used to spend a lot of time fiddling with stuff like F-19 Stealth Fighter and F-15 Strike Eagle II and III back in the day.

I suspect articles on the subject will follow shortly over on Retrounite. Please stay tuned! In the meantime, the complete lineup of MicroProse classics on Steam includes the original F-15 Strike Eagle (in CGA, blergh), Solo Flight, Harrier Jump Jet, Dogfight, The Ancient Art of War in the Skies (actually a strategy game rather than a flight sim) plus Sid Meier's strategy games Decision in the Desert, Crusade in Europe and Conflict in Vietnam.