When I first played B17 Flying Fortress, I was amazed by the realism of this beautiful game. This was quite a few years ago, but it still seems to have my fancy. I would spend hours watching my brother play and it always made me wonder when I would get to play it. When it was finally my time to play, I would spend countless hours on the computer just trying to complete one mission.
After many attempts, I finally beat the game, and I finally got to see the out scene that my brother had told me about.
B17 Flying Fortress still ranks very high up in my book of great games. The ability to choose your own nose art, though you had only a couple of pictures to choose from, left a wonderful amount of personality. Seeing your personal bomber with all the bomb tallies and your fighter kills just left you with a sense of pride that many games today just can not match.
The game came with a manual that was over two hundred pages long of how to play the game and real history of the men who flew these huge birds many years past. It seems that B17 Flying Fortress inspired the love for military aircraft, especially the B17 Flying Fortress and the British
Super marine Spitfire, which still exists in me today. The game had a very nostalgic feel to it that helped to bring the player to a feeling that he or she was actually there. The content of each member of the bomber crew is reinforced when you lose your pilot and your bombardier, and must rely on your co-pilot and radio operator to complete the mission, all the while, your engineer must keep the airplane intact. Your defensive gunners have to keep the German fighters away. The flak is a constant threat, and it really becomes a game of luck when the black clouds of death begin appearing around you.
All in all, B17 Flying Fortress still deserves high marks for its realism and game-play, even in this world of IL2s and Halos.
