I'm not new to flying. I once soloed a twin-engine jet aircraft. I learned to fly in AFROTC and owned my own plane
back in the 70's. I logged over 5,000 crew hours during my USAF career. So I know a thing or two about planes.
One of my early delights in computer games was to open up my machine guns on German bombers over the English
Channel and watch the smoke pour out and the pieces fall from the sky as they yield to my superior skill and firepower.
At the PC Users Group meeting I found a copy of Fighter Squadron - The Screamin' Demons Over Europe by
Activision.
I took it home, loaded it into the computer and clicked on the icon that would have me screaming over Europe.
At that point, I found out that my normal word processing and graphic computer would not support the game
requirements needed to make me to scream.
Well, I did scream, but at the computer, not over the skies of Europe. I took it to another computer in the house
and did the same thing, only to find out that the video card in that computer also did not possess the kick needed
to fly. I had encountered similar problems back in the 64k RAM days, when you had to boot with a clean boot
disk to be able to play certain games, but the video requirements posed a larger problem. Video was hardware that
could not be bypassed with a clean boot disk.
I finally decided that the 3Dfx Voodoo or direct3d-compatible video card requirement was my biggest problem.
Even then it didn't support all of them, but a select few which are listed on the box. The box also states that it requires
you have drivers that support DirectX 6 from Microsoft.
After setting the game aside for a month or two, I finally got another game that forced me to build myself a gaming
computer. One day I got Fighter Squadron back out. This time the installation went okay and I was able to get the
game started. I kicked the tires, lit the fires, and off I went in a demo game. But where?
I spent almost 45 minutes roaming aimless throughout the skies of Europe, I think. I never really knew. I tried to raise
the flaps, lower the gear, look forward, look aft, and maybe even intercept the Demons. But nothing happened. I pressed
function keys, letter keys, ups and downs and sideways keys, but to no avail. I finally flew around until I ran out of gas
I suppose, and bought the farm outside some little village in England, or Germany, or France. I never really knew.
It was then that I realized that this is not a man's game. If you want to play it, you have to read the manual. With the
accompanying cheat card, I selected a bomber and was able to get the engines started again. It took over a dozen tries
to get the plane taxied to the runway and get airborne. I thought that maybe I would find that a joystick would make it
easier, so I installed one and tried again. I then found that some of the calibration screens needed to calibrate my joystick
did not show up on the monitor like they did in the manual. I could not find a calibrate button to click on, but after several
other tries I was able to get the joystick to get it airborne again.
It still was not all that easy to coordinate the flying. I did find that the graphics were good enough to show my propellers
bent backwards when I crashed into ground objects. I did notice that the graphics were nice and clean. The sounds were
good too. In a bomber there are many crew positions and you cycle through them with function keys. Each position had a different view and different functions, but I never made it into combat and found that one person handling all the crew
positions took a lot of fun out of the game.
To be fair with the creator's it never gave me enough encouragement or fun to complete a full mission. Perhaps my
expectations of a quick, easy game were too high. It is not just an arcade game, but more of a strategic game that puts
so much realism into a game that it takes a lot of the fun out of it. I personally just like a shoot-em-up concept that does
not require that I run a checklist and memorize a ton of key combinations to use it.
www.activision.com