Tierlisting ALL Worthwhile 90s Combat Flight Sims
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 30 июл 2024
- 90s flight sims are near and dear to my heart, and since there's not really many videos reviewing them, I figured I'd not only do that but have some fun and tierlist em all too. Let the flame wars begin... Just skip to the end of each segment if you wanna see each rank
00:00 - Falcon 3
08:58 - Tornado
17:30 - EF2000
25:17 - F22 Total Air War
35:54 - Joint Strike Fighter
41:40 - DI Super Hornet
48:06 - Falcon 4.0
58:42 - Jane's Super Hornet
1:04:09 - Fleet Defender (mini review)
1:06:06 - Outro
Falcon 4.0's most enduring memory is the "Archer inbound!" call, we often called it "Archer inBOOM!". Those R-73s were no joke.
Hahahahah and "Sam Launch"
"Archer Outbound!"
It was a bug in the early releases - the R73's went like MACH 12 in those :)
You forgot “Flanker” by SSI. The predecessor of current day “DCS”. Had the best flight-model at the time. It was arguably better than Falcon 4 except it lacked a dynamic campaign. It did feature an amazing mission editor.
100% Flanker's only weakness was the lack of something to do, especially in a gaming scene where most of us had limited if any internet access. If it had shipped with even a decent single player campaign I think it would have usurped a lot of Falcon's thunder (and I played both sims heavily as a teen).
Flanker has the exact same problem as DCS, overfocus on systems/flight model at the expense of everything else. It's just their culture.
On the Mac, Parsoft's A-10 Attack! and A-10 Cuba! were some of the best sims of their time. Great clickable 2D cockpit, airframe damage modeling, and flight model physics. Graphsim's F/A-18 Hornet series was great as well.
Nice vid (I admit I skipped some parts, but will watch it fully later). I need to comment on few things though. I got triggered a bit - FLAME WAR COMMENCE!!!! :).
Oh man, that F-14 review was painful.
For campaign selection in Fleet Defender go to Squadron and then Campaign - you can choose North Cape, Mediterranean and Oceana (training) for Atlantic Sqadrons and if you switch to Pacific Squadrons you will be able to choose between Korea, India and again Oceana (for training).
You can use time compression to make long missions shorter (up to 8x), I can't agree about your view of Fleet Defender's campaign. I always knew what to do and where to go - just pay attention to the briefings and your waypoints.
I agree that Falcon 3 had better music (in fact it's one of my favorite OST from a flight sim), but they couldn't "bring back" the composer, since Falcon and FD were made by completely different dev studios (Spectrum Holobyte vs Microprose). In fact devs that worked on F-15 SE3, Fleet Defender went on making Jane's F-15 and Jane's F/A-18, while Falcon 4 was made by the same people from Spectrum Holobyte that made previous versions. Spectrum Holobyte bought out Microprose and then renamed themselves to Microprose because they felt that brand was more recognizable on flight sim market.
You called the Fleet Defender mission planner "bare bones"? It was used to make all the campaign missions in game and it's pretty capable. Sorry, but you should spend more time with the manual before you start judging.
I will however agree with you on what you have said in the outro.
I woudl like to see some other worthy flight sims not inlcuded in this vid like Gunship 2000, USNF series (It's not really realistic but fun as hell), Jane's F-15, Jane's Lognbow.
The man himself! You definitely have more experience with every 90s sim - and my Fleet Defender portion was a bit rushed. The music thing was moreso a joke :) . And just realized it tells me in the Scenario manual - things are really split-up for this game!
My opinion on Fleet Defender should still stand - I'd just rather play DCS as it does everything Fleet Defender does but better. And that's saying something as I'm not too big a fan of DCS..
You should let me know your overall tierlist just as a list - your expertise should give a fully holistic view for sure.
I also wanted to avoid putting in helis and WW2 - but if I would I'd include Longbow series and Comanche vs Hokum. The latter being a pretty in-depth game with a ton of mods. And in the WW2 side IL-2, European Air War, and 1942.
I agree it seems like I'm totally shitting on Fleet Defender but it's still WORTH playing which like I say in the video there are many many sims that don't have the depth FD has.
@@andrewa837 Haha, I often feel quite opposite - while playing DCS and getting frustrated by the AI, in FD my wingman usually does what I ask of him.
Regarding your tier list my only change would be putting JSF somewhere between B and C, really. I flew all campaigns (finsihed first 3, currently on North Cape) and I have to say this game is surprisingly good IMHO.
I would also added Jane's Fighters Anthology as a culmination of an iconic series. At the time of the release it didn't had stellar graphics compared to other 3dfx capable titles, but the sheer amount of content compensated for that tenfold. Also the wingman control options and its AI in that game had to be one of the best I've seen to date (maybe surpassed only by the Falcon 4). Back in 1994 when first USNF came out this was possibly my GOAT flight sim for some time.
To the list I would perhaps addded AV-8B Harrier Assault by Domark. It was released in 1992 (one year later after Falcon 3.0) - it had pretty solid dynamic campaign, which you could have much control over it. Its flight modelling rivalled the one from Falcon 3.0 in my oppinion, it felt really fluid and realistically presented VTOL characteristics of the Harrier - it's hard to explain but the flight model feels pretty modern, it's like someone made a game today with retro graphics. Just take a look at that vertical landing: ruclips.net/video/wqHiRBtgtWY/видео.html
There were plenty of other flight sims, but to name them all with pros and cons would take me a day ;) I also liked story-driven ones like Strike Commander or Top Gun: Fire at Will (by the makers of Falcon 3 and 4!), those were curios games worth checking out.
@@damsonn Thanks for all your insight. Jane's FA seems very insane with its content for sure, and I've been meaning to check it out!
I didn't know that Harrier had such depth in its gameplay! Shame I missed it, seems totally worth a discussion.
JSF is fun for sure, but I'd rather play other games if I wanted any of what it brought to the table. It is true that you don't get any more airbases to start from, right? I wanted to be accurate in that statement. At least it seemed that way to me after a few missions.
@@andrewa837 Regarding JSF, IIRC you can land on other airbases further in the campaign, though I can't recall if you will start your next sortie from that airbase? I will need to check it out next time I play it.
Apart from being the premier sim from the 90s Falcon 4 had an interesting turn of events, after a number of years Microprose stated they would not support any more updates for their sim, the community asked for the game code to carry on the work themselves but Microprose refused, a short time later the code mysteriously ended up being leaked to the internet. The sim went from strength to strength and is now called BMS
Such a great video, and the only video I've seen that goes this in-depth with each entry, and is presented in this way for 90s sims.
More videos about the old sims would be awesome, there's barley anything out there aside from gameplay, very little actual content of substance when it comes to the older sims like your video here has.
Thank you so much! Hopefully you continue down this track and we see further in-depth videos on old sims. If not though, at least we got this one so thank you.
I've been meaning to add to this video as well. WW2, Mig Alley, and EECH/Heli sims are missed. Mig Alley and EECH being the most interesting ones.
@@andrewa837 Honestly, you really should! The fact this video only covered modern-day-set games is... honestly a bit criminal if you ask me, lol. Sure WWII didn't get that many great sims up until about IL-2 and Battle of Britain II, but to be fair Rowan's games are owned by a publisher who isn't interested in working with GOG or Steam, so... IL-2 and its ilk are pretty much all we get.
Great video BTW, hence my many comments- But Imagine if DCS had half the content and just plain fun of these 90s sims? We've effectively traded hyper realism and aircraft ultra fidelity for worthy content! Fun fact - the ground attack capabilities of the F22 were greatly exaggerated in those old sims, as no one really knew the IRL capabilities of this state of the art super secret aircraft. In reality the F-22 only has a 2 JDAM or 8 GBU 39 (no Rifles or Magnums or rockets!) payload as the aircraft has no built in targeting pod or the means to carry one - Its a pretty much a strict air to air fighter!
Exactly, DCS is C tier at best here because it's not a game but by God those planes are just asking to be put into a real game.
@@andrewa837 the only reason I am flying DCS is for the VR experience. I was always Fskcon 4 then BMS but man I just love VR
@@andyaim4764 BMS has VR
Sims didn't die, the sim craze moved from the West to the East. Lock On and IL-2 Sturmovik both released in the early 2000s, with Lock On being a sequel to 90s Flanker (which I wish you've included)
@@delayed_control interesting theory! And yeah many told me include Flanker, missed that one
Awesome video for sure! I’m making a combat heli sim that has roots in a lot of the 90s sims. Thanks for all the effort you put into this video.
One that I’d have loved to see was US Navy Fighters Gold Edition!
Great video! But I think you missed Jane's F-15. And you missed great Heli sims such as Jane's Longbow 1/2, EECH and so on.
Great balanced overview of what was on offer in the 90s. You've picked up where I pretty much left off flight sims (end of the 80's / 16 bit Atari ST) but I never lost interest. I've been collecting these & will be playing all of them. Just need Falcon 3 & 4 to finish off this list.
You have a collection? Send me a pic (discord: ajthenoob)
Loved to play Jane's WWII Fighters back then, still have a copy of Falcon 4 + manual over here.. it was the pinnacle of modern jet combat sims back then. Thanks for the video!
thanks for making this video. I like learning about the flight sims that I didn't play during the 90's. it really was the golden era for flight sims.
LO:MAC (2003) should be on this list for sure, but I agree Falcon 4.0 is the benchmark.
Good video, brought back some good memories. :)
Incredible, I appreciate the time and energy you put into this.
@@louiswest2279 thanks for watching!
Wow I thought this vid would've had way more traction given the quality kudos to you! Great job keep at it! You've definitely earned a subscriber!!
(Edit: grammar)
The Holy Grail of Tornado (yet another elephant in the room) is the missing aircraft's shadow! For a flight sim where most of the action takes place below 1,000 feet, adding a dynamic shadow (like 1989's JetFighter[!]) would be an absolute blast!
Really there's no shadow?! Interesting...
Amazing Video, very informative! Thanks for this!
And thank you for watching
Brought back some fond memories, thanks. A-10 Cuba! One of my all time favourites that had incredible damage modelling.
I'll have to try that one out. It's tough to get working I think. Glad you enjoyed this!
I heard that a guy from Finland made the first ever source code mod to Tornado and that was not way back in the 90s. It was something like 6-7 years go! It's fun to see that people are still into old flight simulators!
I own everyone of these sims. Still have the original manuals and discs and/or CDs. Excellent video!
A few of points about JSF. The entire globe was modeled. There was a cheat that would allow you to fly any aircraft in the game. You could control your pilot after ejection and he had a pistol.
JSF is super cool but just not much there in terms of actual gameplay. Lots of content but not much workflow.
Great material!
underrated channel, earned my sub
Nice video. Definitely worth mentioning the father of DCS World - Su 27 Flanker and especially Flanker 2.0, which still looks very good today.
I've been asked about this game lots of times. But does it have anything worthwhile going for it compared to DCS today? (Most games here still have something to offer even today to put them above DCS sterile museum)
in the JFS you could maneuver your parachute, once you landed you could walk and shoot. I still listen to his music to this day while flying in other simulators. Excellent compilation
I forgot to mention that feature! Always funny that they had that, you can 1 man army takeover the airbase
@@andrewa837 yeah!! great memories.
Awesome greatly presented. I grew up on Lock On and BMS!
Thanks for commenting! I should've added Flanker
My parrents never understand, why i dont kill enemies in Doom and why im reading 400 pages of manual instead :D
this should be a part 1, as there are still a few great sims from the 90s, fighter squadron SDOE is a good example, and was developed by the same teams that designed EF2000 and TAW
thank you for making this video. the only 90s flight sim i played was TFX. We never got to play other sims mentioned except Falcon 4 because they were not popular in Pakistan. But this video shows alot of awesome flight sims I missed and how feature rich they were.
If Falcon 4 was popular in Pakistan you already got the best :)
TFX was awesome
Great video
Awesome video, earned a sub!
Same here. I'll have to check out your BMS content
@@andrewa837 please, be my guest! :D
Janes USAF was what I played in the 2000s reason I love the Air Force
This doesn't get enough credit... awesome compilation!
Thanks flight sim and LEGACY flight sim community is small so I'm surprised I broke 1k.
As for Tornado, this is one of these games I had seen on the spectrum holobyte upcoming games poster, but NEVER could find it in the store! Long before the days of Steam, you had to HOPE your local store actually got a copy of the game you wanted...sadly mine never did so I assumed Tornado was just forgotten vaporware. Honestly, It wasn't till recently watching some YT content that I discovered it actually existed..among some other sims I wanted as a kid!
I was ignorant as a kid and only knew of Novalogic games in elementary school. I remember playing the Comanche 3 demo mission 1000 times. If only I knew about any of these games. EF2000/TAW was my favorite in highschool as well as Falcon BMS 4.32.
I only play BMS religiously now, this was kind of my love letter to all the old sims. Some Falcon 4.0 versions are still worth playing, though.
We have gone from this to VTOLVR and DCS. imagine what we will have in 30 years.
I got Janes USAF when it was released in 1999. Loved that game! I remember having a hard time getting the air refuelling right, but once I did, it was so satisfying. Also loved that several aircraft were modelled in the game, as well as the proper era's for each aircraft. I've been longing for a game set in/during the Vietnam era ever since!
I agree. Even the Korean war. Mig Alley is a super unique game I hope to cover sometime. I have the script down and plenty of gameplay, just lazy
Falcon lives! Nice review!
It's a shame I made this video RIGHT before dgvoodoo2 can upscale all versions of legacy falcon.
lol, the Joint Strike Fighter menu pic looks like all the concept renders of the NGAD
Oh my guy you NEED to play Jane's F-15 Strike Eagle. It is the best by far, having played most on your list.
From the menus, to the game modes, to the campaigns, to the vibes. Everything felt so great and it looks like magic to be a game from the 90s.
I remember spending nights playing this just listening to the many radio calls and just looking at the empty void, with just my cockpit screens to look at.
Wonderful experience, really should look up. Way better than USAF and Hornet.
Other game that I love, but I don't know if you include helis, is Commanche vs Hokum, since it has an entirely simulated war behind the excellent chopper models, quite easy to play too.
45:00 yeah a lot of old games use the fullscreen LUT on the gpu to do color and gamma correction, due to how fast it is. this does not work in windowed mode, only exclusive fullscreen.
Don't forget Europe air war
still waiting for that modern flight sim that matches the mission editors and ai from 2 decades ago. something like Falcon BMS + Il2 1946 + DI tornado. Also would need a proper flanker sim; my favorite jet
Joint Strike Fighter with a Voodoo card and a OC'ed Celeron @ 400mhz.
You could even put in a cheat and fly all planes in the game.
Why the hell do I remember this.
Nice vid, but without A-10 Attack!/Cuba, Harrier Assault SVGA, F/A-18 Hornet Classic, Su-27 Flanker 1.0 this list is light years away from being complete. I would even say, I would put the ones i mentioned anyday in the list instead of the ones you mentioned, if I had to choose.
Harrier Assault should've made the list, I agree. A-10 I've heard of, but never played. How is it / what makes it unique?
I wanted to at first include ww2 and helis, but I'm an impatient guy and decided not to. Mig Alley is the only one I regret doing. It's for sure A-B tier.
Gimme ya tierlist.
@@andrewa837 Well, A-10 Attack! is one of the best flight seems of its era because of several reasons. First of all the best physics engine for its time. Second is diverse missions. When you put this into mix you get huge replayability, every sortie is unique, you can play same mission dozens of times easilly. But to get all that it should be played on Mac. Because only on Macs you can drag Cuba files into Attack! folder, and get the map view. You can check on my channel, I have a video with it, which basically highlights all of these. On Macs there also was F/A-18 Hornet. When it was released in 1993 it was hands down the best flight simulator, you can search on youtube: "F/A-18 Terror on Hawaii". I recorded with best possible graphics: 1152x864. Can you imagine resolution like that back in 1993? It looked simply wonderful. So, my top tier list, in not particular order (not including helis, WW2, WW1): F/A-18 Hornet, A-10 Attack/Cuba!, Su-27 Flanker, Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, EF-2000, F-117, Fleet Defender, Harrier Assault SVGA, US Navy Fighters, F-29 Retaliator.
You did not implement the amazing Commance 3 and Longbow Series here?
Jane's F-15 was excellent, should've been included
@@aerialbugsmasher but what makes it stand out? Is the cockpit clickable? Dynamic campaign? Insanely awesome vibe?
@@andrewa837 all of the above. The Iraq campaign was very accurate to what they did in the actual gulf war and the missions varied depending on how well or bad you did them. Almost the entire cockpit was clickable. Mission editor was really powerful as well.
I would just like to point out that Microprose is back and is making flight sims again.
Not a fighter jet game, but I spent a lot of time on Longbow Gold 2 back then😃
Not bad - but sadly missed one of my faves "Flight of the Intruder" 1990 Spectrum Holobyte - and yes it was cutting edge at the time and top of the flight sim charts.
Looks interesting! What's your overall rankings, if you were to make a list?
If they have the Tornado source code, maybe a 640x480 is possible.. how hard can it be? Very I suppose..
Not possible. It's pretty much hard coded according to Frankie
Tear Down 😢 all my childhood!!!!!
Hehe, what got torn down here
I had EF2000 back in 1996 (or so) but i never managed to get this DOS game running! :-s
Ef2000 reloaded, my friend. Google it!
I am missing Jane's Fighters Anthology. Not realistic at all, but for me the most fun sim of the 1990s. I spend hundreds of hours playing the campaigns in that game.
Yo, I have a copy of the Eurofigther 2000 game. My dad gave it to me. To bad its to old to run on my Windows 11 :(
Janes USNF was my favourite by far.
To play Falcon 3.0, I remember having to spend 60 bucks on a memory manager so my computer could access RAM above 640k. I still have the manual and maps from my copy I bought back in 92'
DOS memory is mind boggling. I grew up with Windows 95/98 so never had any DOS experiences besides playing some games, but even in DOSBOX falcon 3.0 can struggle to run.
Falcon BMS for life.
@@Ripper669 falcon 4ever
why the add are awesome? like can't we get the add like for plane module? theyd be perfect on my wall too
@@titouan6858 they're great
Can you tell me where to get f22 taw and the tornado game?
Tornado is now on Steam, TAW is free to download, Google "TAW 2.30"
Any reason why the Graphsim Hornet series didn't make it?
No particular reason, but I heard it's very hard to get running and downloads/info on it seems very sparse. Also maybe I was suffering from hornet fatigue XD
Verry cool
Loved Jane's longbow
Helicopters and WW2 were out of scope since I'm impatient, but maybe someday...
35:54 lol on them building on the boeing one being the winner
It's funny you can choose between both.
Yoooo... Andrew A, huh? That's my name, dude! You're into aviation to?
You say Joint Strike Fighter supports Direct 3d and Glide - I'm pretty sure it's software and Glide
I'd like to see a comparison between F3.0, F-15 III, Fleet Defender and Tornado.
I've thought about it. Tornado AI is difficult to meter because the tornado is at such a disadvantage, and, no padlock view.
@@andrewa837 perhaps but the F-15 does similar ground strike missions so idk which to prioritise playing.
i used to play flight sims as a kid, but since i didn't speak any english back then, i couldn't get far in these games (played battle of britain, F 19 stealth fighter, F22 lightning 2).
but lately, i've been itching to come back to flight sims and got myself a brand new HOTAS from virpil and some panels and MFDs from Winwing.
i don't understand the DCS hate i've been seeing in some areas of youtube.
why the hate? the game looks great, seems to have really good physics and high fidelity aircraft. i even found a dynamic campeign via a mod which is free to download.
The main issue of DCS is that it's sterile. It's a switch simulator not a game. If you like a "museum" aspect in which you can fly a plane at the highest possible fidelity DCS is for you. But if you want a fighter pilot experience, DCS is NOT for you.
@@andrewa837 well, i did buy the F-18 for DCS and i also got Falcon 4.0 on steam, so i intend to try out both games :)
though i must say, DCS looks really beautiful.
thanks for the quick reply though!
It would be nice if Janes Super hornet got remastered, just like janes usaf and janes USNF 97
You're gonna get so much hate on the F-14 review. Nice job getting all these to run and record. I love playing Falcon 3.0 and I recently picked up Tornado. I wish Falcon had that terrain. It's so annoying to fly low level and have a mountain pop up in your face.
I want to revisit Fleet Defender but at the end of the day the gameplay loop is very minimal, if I'd rather play DCS (a C tier game) then that's where it goes. Sorry not sorry. Still love it, still it's worth talking about for sure.
Falcon 3.0 vs Tornado is all about macro versus micro - and both do it super super well. The micro world of Tornado just sucks me in more as well as the amazing mission planner, enough to elevate it a tier.
No helo sims? I've been playing Apache Longbow and Hind, they're also great!
BTW how did you get all these games? I can only find Falcon 3.0 and Fleet Defender on GOG.
Interested in adding Back to Baghdad from 1995 to your tier list?
Notoriously hard to run I think. Not many videos of it out there either - what are your thoughts on it?
@@andrewa837 I honestly haven't tried to run it in about 25 years. I remember the B-61 nuke being pretty cool. I still catch myself singing the cringey intro song occasionally. I have my copy in storage if you want to try it out and can't find one.
where is "strike fighters" on arcade to sim spectrum?
ah this is the 90's sims
56:45 I don't think that Eurofighter Typhoon was terrible. It might not have been great, but DID at least tried to do something a bit different with the stagnating genre, with the selection of pilots that you would switch between during the campaign. It was released by Rage software, I believe, not Infogrames/Atari.
I personally haven't played it but every ef2000 fan said it was lackluster. Probably like Comanche 4 vs 3
@@andrewa837 Oh yes it was lacklustre. It was more arcadey, and I think that the cockpit was less detailed than EF2000 (not that I've played either in over 20 years so I'm probably mis-remembering some details). I still think it's worth trying out if you get the chance. The campaign was implemented very well, IIRC
I think DI made the apache vs havoc sim
TAW for the win!
TAW rocks.
TAW 2.0 ftw!
Man I just wanted a comprehensive guide on how to setup TAW to run on my laptop and setup my stick and all that.
1. Install TAW 2.30
2. Use configurator to select "Glide Hardware"
3. Copy DGVoodoo dlls to the folder
4. Play
Joystick should "just work"
No WWII FLIGHT SIMS???
Jans Combat Sim, European Air War MS-Combat Simulator
Wow. Lotta comments recently. How'd you find this vid?
I wanted to exclude ww2 and choppers for the sake of time. Maybe that was a problem.
@@andrewa837dcs
@@andrewa837 would love if you made a similar video with all the others that people are suggesting. Including the WW1 & WW2 sims. Not flight related but there were some good sub sims too!
16:40 I mean it has less but more polished content, so that makse sense.
I often think about swapping the two. But I think that the uniqueness of Tornado still elevates it whereas Falcon 3.0 has been surpassed by 4.0 and other combat sims that can do the same thing. Despite that I have more of an affinity for 3.0 because it's more holistic in its combat.
@@andrewa837 yeah, well I was saying that because Tornado seens a bit akin to the "Tiny Combat Arena" which the one dev team guy said already "its going to be a Harrier only game" because he wants you to do the close to the ground missions, not "spam AMRAAMs" kilometers above the ground. which is what you described about Tornado
Where is Jane's USNF?
I believe I've addressed it in other comments, but in short it's too arcade and doesn't have much to make it unique. I love the Novalogic games but they're not here for the same reason
@@andrewa837 too arcade? I think you must be confusing it with other... But dunno maybe you are right.
we now know who leaked it 50:05
The LEGEND
haven't got into Jane's because too arcadee... THUMBS DOWN omg FFS not gonna watch this guy's opinions! JANE'S USAF and IAF was so good.. then Super Pro 9 and Gulf Knight's mods furthering. Why are you even talking about how hard 90s games are to run in these days.. that affects the tier list?? really? Grab your old PII computer and install the CDs.
No strike commander…
Thumbs down
I realy love this video, but where is F22LightningII series? Topgun:fire at will, FSX, F29 Retalion, F16 Fighting Falcon, Hind, Apache.........please, im waiting for No.2
Any Novalogic or Top Gun game was a bit too arcadey to put here. And I say that as a guy who has hundreds of hours in F-22 Lightning 2 and Comanche 3.
F29 Retaliator I guess was too old for me? haha.
I decided not to include helis/WW2, but if I did I would include at least one of those.