This was one of a long line of Microprose games that just ate up my free hours! They kept you fully entertained while sitting in the barracks in Germany or at home in the middle of the night looking like snoopy chasing the red baron with your goggles on and your leather flight cap strapped in tight although there were no combat missions.
While stationed in Germany in the early 80's we had to find things to do to occupy the mind.
I brought a commodore 64, those of you who knew it was the coolest 99 bucks I spent. The second best investment at the time was solo flight.
The game was easy to fly, big ole gauges were easy to understand and your rear view of the plane made it all the more challenging. Depth perception was your main problem... right next to landing at least for me it was.
The missions of flying bags of mail to different locations are well worth the game as it gave you something to do.
Microsoft’s flight sim at the time was all wires and hard to understand unless you had a pilots lic. and went through a good flight school to understand not only what you were
doing but where you were. This little flight sim made up for all that confusion.
It was a little ahead of its time with the small graphics that it had. I think it was where microsoft flight sim got most of its ideas to tell you the truth.
Although I am a huge flight sim fan nowadays, this was the game for us folks that love to just get in there and take control of the stick, find an adventure and take off into our own word. Yes nothing like reaching your destination and crashing on the runway only to do it again, over and over.
If I had to compare it to today’s standards I would give it 4 out of 5 just for the shear joy of flying. My sons use it now and they like it better than the other product, because it is more on their level.
This by far is one of my favourite games of all time. To Sid Mayer this is where it must have all started for him one of his greatest creations at the time, one of the starting points for a many games that he has produced.
