F-117 Nighthawk Stealth Fighter 2.0 | Microprose 1993 (Amiga version)

This is the Amiga version of the classic flight sim from Microprose released in 1991 for PC MS-DOS and in 1993 for Commodore Amiga.
I'm running it on Amiga emulator called WinUAE emulating Amiga 1200 (basic configuration) with 800% floppy drive speed to cut down loading times.
This version is pretty good, it differes from the DOS version, the engine feels similar to Amiga version of Gunship 2000. It runs pretty good on Amiga 1200. The only drawback is strange behaviour of flight model - which can be seen during my landing approach. The aircraft will fly at a perfect heading of 180° despite me pointing the nose anywhere between 150° and 210°. If makes lining up the landing really difficult and thus resulted in my crash. I don't remember this behaviour on my real Amiga 500, but that was 24 years ago so my memory may play tricks on me ;)
*Edit: the issue was caused by higher emulation speed of the CPU, when set to appropiate speed of actual hardware the issue is gone though the game will run much choppier.
Also worth mentioning is the music score which is based on samples rather than midi on the PC.
If you would like to try the game yourself without the need of setting up the WinUAE, here's a neat and tidy package bundled with F-19 Stealth Fighter: thecompany.pl/gra/Nighthawk+F-...
If you see a streached screen after running the game just press F12, go to "Filter" and in "Aspect Ratio Corrction" drop box change "Disabled" to "Automatic".
Stealth Fighter Series:
• Stealth Fighter Series

[@Brisuth1]

I worked on this Amiga version with my best friend (and best man) Mike Colman (RIP)... back in the day I used the name Brian Sutherland (for personal reasons!) Me and Mike had a blast doing all the music for it, and I have to say it was great fun listening to it again after all these years , especially as i don't have copies of all the tunes anymore...so thanks for posting it, it made my afternoon...

[@damsonn]

It's a shame your friend passed away. You two did a great job on the soundtrack. It was one of the things the Amiga version did better than the PC version IMHO. In fact I consider it one of the best Amiga game music along with Turrican series (Chris Huelsbeck) and Jaguar XJ220 (Martin Iveson). Thanks for your comment!

[@chefst]

the intro music for f117a on amiga is one of my absolute favourites of any games i played as a kid. still comes to my mind time and again almost 30 years later. great tune! i remembered the song somwhat different, so i dug up another video where the sequence is is like i remembered it: kzbin.info/www/bejne/h2K2o6GXndt9iZY - guess it has to do with the speed of the machine playing the intro sequence....

[@damsonn]

@@chefst It could be, depending on how fast the game loads another animation sequence another music pattern is being played?. I'm assuming the music was made in some kind of music tracker (very common on Amiga). Here's another video from the intro, which is similar to the one you've posted but still differs a bit. kzbin.info/www/bejne/opnEopJ-et5_rMU And here's another one: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pYqWqXuKq9KNppo

[@Brisuth1]

A tually we were very disappointed with the way Microprose messed up all our timings for the intro. We had the short movie as a standalone animation and we storyboarded it so the music matched the action to the microsecond... But when we got the finished program and loaded it up we couldn't believe how all our careful timings had been discarded, I'm talking in particular about the moment when the missile crashes into the bunker and it just pootles on until it suddenly crashes into the main theme again. That change was supposed to be exactly when the hit occurred. Also the feeble explosion was not the one we had supplied... Incidentally the military music played when receiving a medal is based on the hymn "All things bright and beautiful " Once again thanks for the comments you're very kind....

[@damsonn]

@@Brisuth1 Thanks for your insight. I felt something was wrong with the way the music was lined up with the animation. Interestingly you can find several recordings of the intro from Amiga version, each sounding bit differently (some parts are longer and some are not even present). I'm currenlty trying to remake that intro using real instruments (at least electric and bass guitars, percussion tracked in sequencer) for the music and some in-game footage from more modern flight sim for the animations. I would be really grateful if you could provide some feedback of which parts are prolonged and which might be missing as some parts feel a bit off with the music changing mood basically mid pattern. I'm using this version as a reference: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pYqWqXuKq9KNppo I already posted 2 vids with initial recordings of electric guitar samples and more recent one with drum track. Thanks again for your comments, it's really great to hear from the original creator!

[@CarAudioXpert]

I first played it on my friends PC, then on my Amiga, good lord, 28 y ago!

[@005AGIMA]

Fun fact. The stars in the night sky in this game were set in place, so that they could be used for navigation, just like in RL. I believe they were mapped, to a point, to a real skymap but I dont think it changed with date/time. I think it was the first game of it's type to boast this feature?

[@andreford3197]

I spent an awful lot of time with this sim. I had the PC version and could remember telling myself 'Just one more mission!' before going to bed to get an hour or two of sleep before going the next day. Thanks.

[@majbatou707]

.. Just one more mission!! I said the same too!!

[@mikefm4]

It’s 2022 and I still play this game.

[@camberiu]

It is very unfortunate that they don't make accessible flights sims like this anymore. Today you either go full arcade (ACE COMBAT) or hardcore steep learning curve (DCS).

[@plazma1945]

it still had a 184 page manual :)

[@cjswinson]

Had this on a stack of 5 1/2" floppy discs and would play on my old 486DX 66mhz. These sounds are so nostalgic, almost like the hum of a warp engine. Takes me back.

[@danyoutube7491]

That's interesting, were PC games released on both 3.5" floppies and 5.25", or did you copy them onto the larger form of disk for some reason? I suppose the PC market was big enough that it might have been economical to release games on both disk formats, but I would have thought that 5.25" was very rarely used by that time (then again, I heard a while ago that they could actually have comparable storage capacity to 3.5", which surprised me). I never had a PC until the turn of the millenium but I think that was a very good spec machine for the early 90s, a real treat for games:)

[@Air-Striegler]

Very nice work - it brings up so many sweet memories....(TT) So glad I found this channel! Subscribed.

[@damsonn]

Thanks and welcome to my channel.

[@quakebuglau]

This game is still keep in my harddisk. I meet this game in 1994 when I was a middle school student. It's the first time to let me know 3D simulcation. I use my father's 80286 to play this game. with a 10Mb harddisk.

[@adroharv9213]

having got an accelerator for my A1200 on the basis of this game being not altogether smooth enough, I'd say this is running smoother than a stock A1200. It's running at a very nice framerate here and although the vanilla A1200 played this well enough, I never would haved wanted an accelator in the first place had it been this slick. I could be wrong but I don't think I am

[@damsonn]

That's interesting. Could you confirm the issue I had with the landing line-up (the aircraft seems to fly constantly at 180° heading even if you're pointing your nose within +/- 30° of that direction. I don't remember having that issue on original Amiga 500 back in the day.

[@paulwood6729]

From what I remember you could navigate by the stars. Certains the wonky W at 8:32 looks like Capella.

[@Psychonaut-im3zz]

Thx for the dl package. Handy indeed. I know it's a good one.

[@Fastbikkel]

Very entertaining arcade sim. I liked it a lot.

[@ClassicTrialsChannel]

Brilliant game, one of my fav sims

[@captainzeppos]

Great landing btw.

[@damsonn]

Shitty landing was due to way the game behaves when run on faster speeds than stock A500, more info in video description.

[@Capt_Killingfield]

My dad refused the Nintendo. So i grew up playing sims like this and Chuck Yeager's Air Combat after retiring the old Apple2e greenscreen. Remember those annoying cardboard-ish things with all the holes that you would lay over your keyboard so you knew what keys to press. God those first headaches from Wolfenstein 3D...

[@damsonn]

Ha ha, still have some of those keyboard overlays. Wouldn't trade my Amiga or first PC for Nintendo. You have smart father ;)

[@spana123321]

I may play this later👍👍👍

[@thisguy6559]

Nice Landing!

[@damsonn]

Due to the bug with the physics breaking with increased CPU cycles landings are pretty challenging. I put the clarification in the video description. On the other hand, playing the game with actual Amiga 500 clock speeds is another challenge since you get around 5 fps at most...

[@thisguy6559]

@@damsonn yeah. I remember it well :D

[@robertmiles9942]

I just tried this out on my A1200 hardware with 55mhz 68030 accelerator. It runs fast with all details set to very high. The flight model problem exists there too! It seems to lock travel at 5 or 10 degree intervals. The bug goes away while time acceleration is engaged. Very frustrating!

[@damsonn]

Yeah, that's too bad, since this game on stock Amiga 500 was a stutter fest and on faster ones the flight model breaks.

[@chrissugg968]

The copy-protection always made me laugh - I had a legit copy of the game but could just recognise all the aircraft anyway so didn't need the manual.

[@damsonn]

Same here ;)

[@BaronSFel001]

With Roland enabled the PC version audio becomes both far more comparable and competitive to the Amiga. Not that it's really a fair comparison since Amiga games were typically developed towards the lowest common denominator of machines and this title is no exception. What is fair is the lack of excuse for the Amiga version's broken flight model. Neither PC nor Amiga have anything on the Macintosh port.

[@damsonn]

To be fair, after my investigation the broken flight model was due to emulation speed (which was increased so the game wouldn't look so choppy), I tested it at correct speed and the flight model worked fine. Also worth noting - for the price of Roland MT-32 module you could buy Amiga 500 at the release.

[@thriftweeds]

suddenly attacked by heavy crosswind at end landing approach = fatal crash on tower 36:02 :D

[@damsonn]

I though it was a crosswind at first too, but after inspecting the issue a little more it turns out the flight model is just broken in this version - I covered that in the 3rd paragraph of the video description, you might want to read it. ;) Also at the start of the mission you can see that the speed is rising 7:50 and yet the jet sits steadily on the tarmac until the speed hits 100kts.

[@thriftweeds]

Yes i knew, and i read descriptions all ways, i just wanted to land a joke :)

[@damsonn]

"Land a joke", no pun intended, right? lol

[@ianlockhart7823]

i had i real problem with Air to ground missiles in the Amiga version of this game sometimes there hit rate was to low using on the right targets 3 or more misses

[@bonelessdoritoslocostaco5984]

I'm surprised that a game that came out in 1993, still has the USSR as a target in a mission set in 1997.

[@pelimies1818]

This game is a carbon copy of Strike Eagle II that came out, if I remember correctly, two years before Soviet collapse. Maybe they just followed the 5-year-plan :D Or maybe there was a shortage of villains in that period of time. There sure is not any shortages, at the moment..

[@CarAudioXpert]

The name has changed, not the country...

[@felixfigueroa2740]

April 2022: Russia has proven to be more than a threat yet again!

[@efeefere8338]

nice landing..

[@damsonn]

Read the video description, the flight model seems buggy.

[@marceloabx]

There is a big lag on take off (7:50). I have the same problem here (using FS-UAE). Is there any way to correct this? It´s annoying...

[@damsonn]

Yes, it's because I used higher CPU cycles than original Amiga 500/1200. When you emulate appropriate speed in the emulator it should work fine - this will also fix the bug when the airplane wont fly at any heading only at specific intervals of several degrees - mostly evident during landing when you want to line up for approach - that's why my landing was that bad.

[@marceloabx]

@@damsonn thanks for the advice!

[@raymondyee2008]

Still considering this game since it is based on the real F-117 rather than the F-19 which the original game was based on. I heard though the Steam version has a huge problem of crashing on landing (not sure if that's that bad).

[@TheFlymar]

Just bought it. You can choose "no crashes", "easy landings" or "realistic". Unfortunately it looks worse then amiga version but fun is there:)

[@raymondyee2008]

@@TheFlymar Yep I chose "no crashes" when playing this game. However if you do have serious damage (in "Elite" mode since I wasn't finding it challenging enough on the other modes) and if you screw up a landing in a heavily damaged F-117 you can still get killed.

[@rootbeer666]

What model preset are you using on the emulator? Real speed or unlimited?

[@damsonn]

It's all in the video description - A1200 running at real spead and floppy speed bumped up to 800% for faster loading times.

[@ilhamiyanmaz4743]

Epic ! If I got one dollar per hour that I spent on this game, I'd beat Bezos

[@cjswinson]

Random fact, this game is 30 years old this year. That is roughly 263,000 hours ago. To match Jeff Bezo's net worth of 186B, you would have to make over $700,000 per hour without taking a break.

[@johnroscoe2406]

The 1991 PC version didn't have the 1991 Gulf War as a theater... obviously...

[@damsonn]

Since the game was released later in 1991 and Desert Storm took place in January of that year, the PC version actually does have Desert Storm theatre. Regarding content both Amiga and PC versions are basically identical.

[@captainzeppos]

I used to play this absolute piece of crap every day and night, thinking a) it was the most realistic thing after kerbal (well there was no kerbal back then but anyway), b) it had the most breathtaking graphics after MSFS 2020 (it wasn't 2020 back then but anyway, you get the point).

[@scarpaz]

Ha! The Amiga version had better sound and graphics than the PC one. Interesting (but not surprising). Sweet memories.

[@damsonn]

I can agree about the sound but the graphics were also good on PC. On PC, VGA mode could display 256 colors simultaneously, Amiga 500 with OCS chipset at 320x200 res could display only 32 colors. But with smart palette choice the art still looked good. Unfortunately there was no color-gradient horizon on Amiga because of this.

[@Kerveros1904]

no

[@Kerveros1904]

32 simultaneous colors cannot beat 256 simultaneous. Whatever the pallete of the 32 is.

[@EJ205T]

I loved this game back than, and I can still see, amiga version is not as good as DOS-version.

[@AMIGABLUEBIRD]

they use 16 in 3D Part , its a horrible Port !

[@iwanttocomplain]

Original game design Sid Meier?! Ok then.

[@damsonn]

Yup, he was lead designer on F-19 Stealth Fighter which was a prequel to F-117 SF2.0.

[@z00mbi3s]

Emulated Amiga, and that sound horrible compared to Amiga speed.

[@oldy27]

o7

[@bartacomuskidd775]

I cannot handle this digital violence