F/A18 Interceptor (Amiga) - A Playguide and Review by LemonAmiga.com

Welcome to a review of one of my favourite flight sims on the Amiga. I completed this game before now, but not on this try. lol. 'All you have to do' is watch this and see. :)
PRODUCTION NOTES:
Video Captured: 7.May.13 (training) and 10.Sept.13 (missions)
Editing Started: 12 Sept. 13.
Vid Completed: 15 Nov. 13.
Version: 5 Rev: 1
Again the biggest problem was balancing the vocals with the game. Sorry, if you can appreciate the issue I had with the afterburners and turn up the volume a bit, at least that helps. :) I wanted a more environmental soundscape on this one, and a low key vocal from me seemed to add to that. At the same time, I had to make the best of raw footage where everything seemed to go wrong. I failed to land on the carrier and the runway, failed to hit the magic refuel and rearm spot during mission 4 (despite me saying I did in the video) etc etc. I couldnt even complete mission 4 in order to show you guys the final missions. So sometimes going into games unrehearsed has its down sides. In general this was not my favourite review, and I'll try to sound a bit more cheerful next time. ;)

[@kyrkbymannen]

My absolute favorite game ever on the Amiga 500. I wonder how many hours ive played this...

[@kalsolarUK]

There's no better example of an atmospheric game on the Amiga than this.

[@numbers111222]

I used to drive around the roads haha. I was a kid, give me a break :P

[@fleuger99]

I played this like crazy, my fav flight game. I had an Amiga 500 with the extra memory and loved it. It was way ahead of the PC's of the day. Thanks for the vid

[@jhanna9901]

Oh man, that load screen brings back so many memories. I played the crap out of this game on my Amiga 500 back in 1988 as a freshman in college. I can't tell you how many times I would fly under the Golden State Bridge (inverted of course :) ). I probably played free flight more than the missions.

[@LemonTubeAmiga]

Inverted is impressive! :)

[@jhanna9901]

@@LemonTubeAmiga I remember crashing a lot until I got it down 😂

[@BrawndoQC]

Same! Flying under bridges was my favorite thing. That intro screen made me feel old af.

[@auritone]

This game was more Topgun than any Topgun game released. :) How many hours I spent just flying around are too numerous to count. Extremely impressive game.

[@123Actionful]

That game never gets old! Thanks for upload :)

[@rymdskrotet]

Downloading the FS2020 SU11 40 Anniversary edition. But it was here, with F/A-18 hornet on my Amiga 500 (and also Hellcats over the Pacific on a later Mac Performa) my interest for aviation and simulation really took off (yes, pun intended). I had played around with Flight Simulator around 89-93 but I never really got found of it - then., Now I love general aviation almost more than military planes, but now and then I found myself in DCS pushing that F/A-18 Super Hornet to its limits. This video gives me my memories back! Thank you! =) =)

[@chriscowey7464]

This brings back so many memories. My first flight sim, played it loads. Lost so many hours in it :) As you mentioned It was also one of the first games i noticed was enhanced for more memory. I remember being amazed at the difference once I fitted my trapdoor expansion and booted up the game. The music was amazing :)

[@Mde7FPV]

What a great game! So complex but accessible. And those graphics were way ahead of its time! Even today strangely appealing to the eye. Those simple low poly flatshading... Gotta love it.

[@Zontar82]

One of the best sim for the amiga.i used to take off from the..'"secret"airport ;)i had a 512kb a500 so instead of that music i had some eerie background sounds

[@LemonTubeAmiga]

Ah, the 'Secret Airport'. I almost forgot about that. Appearantly, they wanted to have one of the missions start at Edwards Airforce Base (hit key 0 to access from the map page), but they weren't allowed to use the base so in the end they had to take it out. Even though we get more buildings with 1MB ram, it would have been nice to have even more buildings and more missions.

[@Zontar82]

ah i didn't knew they removed it beacuse they weren't allowed...i thought it was just because they cut some content to make space :)yeah more buidlings and missiosn wouldv'e been cool,but keep in mind that in 1988 this was the future :P

[@6StimuL84]

Weren't allowed? Would have told them to sod off and put it in anyway.....but I'm American....lol

[@deimos2k6]

OMG I just plunged into memories when I saw the intro picture with the awesome music in the background...... This is AWESOME.

[@JONXLR8]

Great video. This was one of the first games I had for my Amiga. Found it hilarious forcing Air Force One into the ground if you tried to land on the same runway as it

[@georgesmith6600]

Would be nice to see an F-15 Strike Eagle, 688 Attack Sub and Gunship 2000 reviews if you have them, Lemon.

[@commentingpausedtoprotectus]

Oh and thank you for all these great videos, really cheering me up watching them :)

[@commentingpausedtoprotectus]

Wow, such happy memories, I remember looking at this on display in George Henry Lee with the Batman pack, I was amazed when my Dad bought that for me :) I figured out a way to get the in game music by closing down a window in workbench at a certain point during loading, god knows how I remember that lol.. this was before I got the Fat Agnus chip of course :p

[@LemonTubeAmiga]

As mentioned in the description, sorry for the sound issues. I'll also try to sound a bit more cheerful next time. ;)

[@MrFatLegend]

you sound fine mate, forget what others say,,

[@Aexomer]

It's worth mentioning that the game runs far better from Fast RAM. If you're playing in WinUAE, configure an A500 with an extra half a meg and whack the CPU speed up to 4x (14Mhz). It plays much better.

[@CeeJayDK]

I played this originally on my A500, which I later upgraded with an HDD and 68030 accelerator with more fastram. This game will use the extra computing power and will run much smoother. I also ran a utility to put my Amiga in 60hz mode which lowers resolution but also improves framerate. I used used a fast math library for my Amiga desktop but I'm not sure if the game used math from the libraries or it's own code. Anyways if you're playing WinUAE I suggest experimenting with the Amiga model and processor speeds and see how high you can go.

[@divinuminfernum]

still a good challenging game - i played this first when i was 8 years and i could never manage carrier landings then, but i thought i would be bale to now, but nope it is still tough - good dogfighting enemy AI too. the jetfighter series on dos was the IBM continuation of this game

[@marcbennett9906]

Great game, still own an original copy of this. Thanks for the Vid, looking foward to the next one.

[@echopark25]

What an excellent game, think I still have this :D I still have the code wheel at least. DogFight was another great combat sim.

[@0999001]

my favourite flight simulator on amiga is NightHawk F-117A Stealth Fighter 2.0

[@ollllj]

This game taught me how to land on an aircraft carrier, fly multiple loopings unter the golden gate bridge, crash into random skyscraper and land on water close enough to start off again long before I grew hairs on mah balls.

[@nickharvey7233]

Absolutley loved this game - played so many hours on this with ny trusty QuckShot II joystick. Excellent game, but so frustrating that the last mission (attacking the Soviet carrier sub) was bugged. Completely unsinkable- spent hours going backa and forth, refueling/rearming, and unleashing everything at it, to no avail.

[@LemonTubeAmiga]

There was a way to complete the final mission, but I cant remember the trick off the top of my head. I think if you wait long enough the sub eventually sinks and that's the mission over. The fun was in successfully landing the jet onto the sub. :)

[@nickharvey7233]

@@LemonTubeAmiga Cheers, I'll have to fire up an emulator and see of I can finally beat it! And agreed, that was a personal highlight from the game - landing on the sub - and if my memory doesn't deceive me, the Soviets very kindly refueled and rearmed the very plane that was doing its damndest to send them into the inky blue...

[@LemonTubeAmiga]

@@nickharvey7233 - I think you had to get 8 missiles directly into the conning tower or something like that. Let us know if you manage to beat it.

[@robertmiles9942]

One of my first, and favorite, games for my Amiga 500. Sadly, while the framerate increases with faster machines, so does the time scale.

[@MrLandale]

I love this game! I once managed to land upside down :)

[@spyweb314]

The music on the title screen was the same on the amiga 500, did you say it was only on the 1mb ram amiga 3000?

[@LemonTubeAmiga]

I hope I didnt say that. Interceptor is a 0.5mb game, which is enhanced on any Amiga with 1MB - which switches on the title music, and more buildings in the city.

[@Thx-cn8gk]

the best one

[@v3teran75]

Brilliant game for its time ground breaking 3D however its weakness was lack of missions.

[@LemonTubeAmiga]

Absolutely

[@williamarthurfenton1496]

This reminds me of playing Birds of Prey and the original Gunship (C64)

[@WezHoward]

This way my first amiga game (& the only one i paid for, X-copy) ;)

[@gumdeo]

Classic simulator.

[@LemonTubeAmiga]

Bob Dinnerman and Moses Ma also created a PC version called Jetfighter: The Adventure. The PC version is F/A+ and there are differences, as seen in Computer Chronicles 1990 Ep11, from 15:02. kzbin.info/www/bejne/qp6bh4eQZ8uspdUm2s

[@6StimuL84]

Actually there were a few Jetfighters ...Played this and them to death...lol

[@abulmezn]

I never got to play it because idiot 8 year old me threw the blue password wheel …could not generate the password necessary for access …i cried so much …tried to get my father to buy me another wheel from the computer shop when I realised what it was all about. but in 1990 they did not believe in making money from consumables it seems…never was able to replace it and never was able to play it 😢

[@Banzeken]

3:00 Computers with a 386 (hell, even 286) processor could handle 3D graphics at a perfectly fine frame-rate, which means that you are deliberately lying by claiming a 386 can only “barely” run 3D games. The channel PCRetroTech clearly demonstrates this in their upload “The BEST Early 3D DOS Games (1981-1990)” and this isn’t even counting other MS-DOS conversions like Midwinter or the Freescape engine games and native x86 games like Stunts, Test Drive III, Die Hard (Dynamix, 1989) or Red Baron. This video reeks of narrow-minded Amiga fanaticism.

[@LemonTubeAmiga]

By 3D I meant things like Wing Commander and Doom etc, not 3D based games. Sure an Atari 400 could play vector games, but flight sims needed at least a 386 to play anywhere near smoothly. With Indy 500 and F1GP, they needed at least a 386.

[@michalsulicki5148]

Gunship 2000 was soooo better

[@JamesSmith123456789]

This guy is a bad pilot I played this game and I never crashed Into the aircraft carrier not once😎