The sim is set in and around the San Francisco area, the first active mission beginning on Sept 1st, 1994. That must’ve seemed a fair way off in 1988! The U.S.S Enterprise is in the area to the south-west of the city, and Naval Air Stations Alameda and Moffett Field are also in the vicinity. Some of the major landmarks are present, including Alcatraz, the Transamerica pyramid and the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s mandatory that each be buzzed in ways that would get you booted from the Navy in a heartbeat.
All of these must be defended from a bunch of bad guys in MiG-29’s that are just out to mess up everyone’s day. All of the bad guys typically come in from the North, and they’re all coloured red in your radar. I reckon they’re actually Canadians…
Before undertaking any of the missions, you have to go through some training. This involves following an instructor and following him through various manoeuvres. If you mimic his flight sufficiently well, you’ll be qualified for active duty and the first mission. If you fail, then you’re pretty much screwed – the training needs to be passed in order to get to the meat of the game.
Although there aren’t a million missions to be performed, each task is pretty varied, from rescuing Air Force One, shooting down cruise missiles flying at 60 feet and even taking on a carrier sub in the last mission. The combat isn’t too bad, either – the lack of views made dogfighting somewhat of a chore, but getting guns kills is doable if you work at it. The computer-controlled fighters have a decent go at it.
For its time, this was a pretty good flight sim, although it did have its quirks (more on that in a bit). The sim provides a good feeling of flight, which just begs for you to fly instead of bothering with the missions. I don’t think anyone that had this game could ever resist flying under the Golden Gate Bridge upside down above Mach 1. =)
Back then, the flight model felt great, but it’s aged rather badly. Give it full throttle and your aircraft accelerates more like a missile than a plane, passing the sound barrier within a few seconds of take-off. The aircraft also accelerates wildly going straight up, as if gravity is just a suggestion. The amount of power on hand is evident in a 90° bank with the stick held all the way back – with afterburners, the aircraft will maintain speeds of 800 knots.
Also, banking the aircraft a little results in a lot of yaw. I didn’t remember this, so when I fired up WinUAE to have a go, it felt like I was somehow pressing one of the rudder controls. This isn’t the case, however as the rudders are wickedly effective – you definitely know when you’ve stepped on ’em. Stomp on one of the rudder keys at high speeds and you’re treated to a yaw rate of 30-40° per second. With a running start, you can turn through a complete 360° in about 10 seconds.
Stalls are present, but compared to contemporary sims, they’re obviously canned. The nose drops suddenly and picks up just as suddenly when you gain speed. It is possible to hold the nose up and maintain level flight by plaing with the power to maintain speed. Stalls are non-existent.
On the upside, there’s a decent feeling of inertia to the aircraft, and the way the aircraft sinks as your speed decreases is typical for sims of the era, but was essential to even remotely simulate carrier operations. Playing with a digital stick and keyboard throttle controls is nowhere near as refined as the HOTAS rigs of today, though.
The avionics are typical for their time, also. You get the standard omniscient radar that can automatically tell you who, what, where, when and how from about 30 miles out, even if you’re not looking in that direction at the time. A radar jammer, chaff and flares are provided to decoy incoming missiles, and the HUD tells you which way you’re pointing and how high and how fast you’re going. There’s no flight path marker, however, so guessing exactly where you’re headed with the lack of visual cues can be tricky at time. The artificial horizon is useless, which is a shame as there’s no pitch ladder on the HUD. At 45° nose up or nose down, all you have is a big red or blue blob that tells you nowt other than you’re probably going up or down.
Some of the quirks in the sim were a laugh. For example, there’s a hard ceiling over the simulated world at just above 40,000 feet. If you go vertical you’ll eventually hit the ceiling and stop moving altogether. Fire off a missile while at this ceiling and it’ll just hover alongside you.
Some other fun stuff included a weird damage model that allowed you to scrape along the ground at stupidly high speeds and pull back up without any damage. Doing so cut your speed quickly, though – if you let it get down too far you’d never get back up. Also, carrier landings at 600 knots were easily performed, which probably aren’t endorsed by the U.S. Navy.
The addition of thrust reversers (never seen an F-16 or F/A-18 with those) presented another fun possibility – backward flight. If you start at a decent altitude, cut your power to zero and then start reducing it further so that the reversers kick in (up to a maximum of -25% or something?) you’ll slow down and start falling towards the ground. Then the weirdness starts – in the same nose-down attitude, you’ll start seeing the Altimeter increase again. Welcome to the world of backwards (if uncontrolled) flight!
Overall, F/A-18 was a more or less a must-have for any Amiga flight simmer. Even though it was a little inferior to F-19 Stealth Fighter, Microprose’s effort involved sneaking around in an aircraft that had trouble breaking 500 knots. There was lots of low-level fun to be had with Interceptor, and that alone was worth it.
