Top 80s flight sims - anyone remember these? Nostalgia trip.

Aside from MSFS, anyone else old enough to recall these ones?

 

Fighter Pilot - My first experience of flight simulation, saw it on a friends ZX Spectrum when I must have been 9 years old, made me want to be a fighter pilot.

 

ACE (Air Combat Emulator) - a lot like the above, slightly better I think.

 

Chuck Yeagers AFT - the best of all the 80s ones, arrived at the end of the decade.

 

Tomahawk - Really good Apache sim, had a weird security feature called a lenslock or something.

 

Gunship - Another Apache sim, not as playable as tomahawk, but had more features.

 

Acrojet - one of the few non-shooters, object was to fly around doing stunts, cutting ribbons.

 

Strike Force Harrier - Wasn't as good as I hoped it would be.

 

Jump Jet - Another Harrier game, was an even bigger disappointment

 

Ace of Aces - Think I spent some good hours on this one.

 

 

Did I miss any? Arcady ones like Afterburner and Thunderblade don't count.

 

In some ways I'm jealous of kids born today, starting out with amazing flight sims available, on the other hand I feel privileged to have seen the evolution and progress of home flight simulation since the beginning.

A little later than the 80's but there was some great stuff in the early 90's.

 

I cut my teeth on F16 Combat Pilot and Thalion Airbus A320 on the Amiga along with some of the Microprose sims including Gunship 2000. Graduated to the PC and along came classics like Tornado, TFX and of course the various Janes titles (Longbow 2 being my favourite). Civvie wise I remember being so excited installing FS5 along with a UK scenery pack from FS4, the imagination went into overdrive with the 32 colour graphics and pyramids for hills.

 

Today we are well served for civilian flight sims but not so good if you want a military game with a dynamic campaign.

My first was Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, then graduated to FS-5.1

I had a flight sim on the TRS-80 color computer. I think (but am not sure) that it was the original one that became MS Flight sim. But the first sim I REALLY got into came much later. Red Baron 3D.

I LOVED flying in online campaigns with that game! Flew with the Lone Wulffe squadron as LW_Hoss.

I flew many flights on Sublogic ATP Airline Transport Pilot flight simulator. It had a list of major airports in the USA and 2 co-workers and I would fly then compare notes on our flights the next day at work. Looks like the sim is still for download.

Yes, not 80s but early 90s

Yes, you missed several

Jetfighter I and II

Falcon 3.0

Eurofighter

Tornado

and about 20 others that escape my mind right now but i surely played them all

Edited July 23, 2020 by Kapitan

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?323433-In-the-beginning

 

play fs1 fs2 fs3 or fs4 on your iDroid or dPad

 

Edited July 29, 2020 by Amtran618

actually for glass cockpit fans, simming with FS1 or FS4 is just like having a big garmin or MFD

you guys must still be thrilled by FS1, you should keep playing it

Yes, not 80s but early 90s

Yes, you missed several

Jetfighter I and II

Falcon 3.0

Eurofighter

Tornado

and about 20 others that escape my mind right now but i surely played them all

 

Tornado was hard meeting the strict timings on missions. Was also a pain constantly tinkering with the config.sys and autoexec.bat files to free up as much of the base 640k memory as possible. Then along cams Falcon 3 and the game changed. Remarkable that the bones of that sim still exist in Falcon BMS.

I flew many flights on Sublogic ATP Airline Transport Pilot flight simulator. It had a list of major airports in the USA and 2 co-workers and I would fly then compare notes on our flights the next day at work. Looks like the sim is still for download.

I liked the 3DAGS version. However, I didn't found it anymore.

 

Bernard

agree, Eurofighter was a jump in graphics but didnt have the gameplay of Facon 3.

Later came Falcon 4 in 1996 but by then we were hooked in FS95

 

btw Falcon 3 was released in 1991, and Tornado 1993

I was in London in 1991 buying a IBM PS2 color computer and just that week Falcon 3 was being released.

All I knew about flightsim was the FS1

So started playing the Falcon 3 from its release date and thought people didnt know what they were missing hahah

Edited July 30, 2020 by Kapitan

I had FLIGHT UNLIMITED and IFLY from the early Nineties. (In fact, I still have both on discs). The cockpit graphics on Flight Unlimited were just amazing for 30 years ago...

Yes, mid to late nineties, the makers Looking Glass released the “Jane’s” combat series, probably the best combat series of the last century.

 

His mentor, Seamus Blackley was hired by Bill Gates and developped Xbox, so we are talking someone that made history in flightsim and gaming

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?323433-In-the-beginning

 

play fs1 fs2 fs3 or fs4 on your iDroid or dPad

 

You may be interested in the Flight Simulator history video series I am working on. Uploaded the trailer a couple of days ago.