Falcon - Amiga

A flight simulator released by Spectrum Holobyte in 1987 for the Macintosh and IBM Compatibles, ported to the Amiga in 1989.
It has got nice graphics and sound, very good speed, a quite realistic HUD and radar display (probably the most realistic available in those days), good missions, nice dogfights, etc.
One of its drawbacks is the flight model, some aspects of which lack in realism, even when compared to less realistic simulators of its time.
In addition, the controls are a bit touchy, which makes the airplane difficult to control. This makes the lack of analog joystick option evident. In some situations like dogfights, it is better to use the mouse in order to have a slightly higher degree of control on some maneuvers, not that this makes it any easier.
Another important thing that's missing is rudder control.
The above criticism doesn't mean that it is a bad game. On the contrary, Falcon is one of the best simulators of its era, which is probably why it is judged more strictly.
So, besides a few problems, some of which were inherited from the PC version, it has got many good features.
Therefore, it is a very good game.

[@testtesttest9959]

I remember that Game. I Played it offen in 1990 with Amiga 500.This Graphic and Sound, Managed by a normal Amiga 500 with 1 Mb and 7 mhz is unbelievable.

[@paulyb6458]

The manual for this game - outstanding.

[@GiveMeAnOKUsername]

Pauly B I bought this game before I had an Amiga so I could read the manual.

[@nickharvey7233]

Totally agree - loved the diagrams teaching you the Split-S and Immelmann. I have to confess, I preferred F/A-18 Interceptor as a game, but awesome manual.

[@MaverickM1]

The era of no day zero patches and bugfix online updates. When gaming was pure fun. And the Amiga was like a fucking alien technology for its time... Good ol’ dayz. Thank you Mr. Jay Miner, your machine still rocks!

[@thomasraven]

I was addicted to this game back in the day. Great flight sim!

[@mattcam200577]

Omg I spent hours and hours on this and actually thought I was maverick !!! Now look at it 5fps and polygons ... Still this was cutting edge back in the 80’s

[@pizzaDhut]

I must have spent about 1,000 hours playing this.

[@mainestategop]

WOW! You got the congressional medal of honor on your first mission! Nice work!

[@Leahrose1199]

used to play this all the time

[@narrowfeather]

Loved that game! On my Amiga 2000, it was balls-out amazing back then. I don't think any game has provided me more hours of truly engaging and enthralling play. You could enjoy playing relatively quickly for such a complex game (the manual was awesome!) but it was so complete and complex that it took extensive flight hours to really master the details and find all the hidden goodies. Best game ever. I still miss it. The hardest thing about upgrading to Macs.

[@karlwalker1771]

I printed the manual out and read it from cover to cover lol Loved the game and even linked amigas In the day :) Pickled targets every mission.

[@MrComputerRetro]

Glad you like it! I've been too busy lately to make videos, but I will upload more when I find the time.

[@deflyboyreturns]

GREAT video! I wish there was more full-length videos of old DOS simulator splayed realistically and hardcore like you. I hope you and others will make more in the future, the busy environment and the simulation experience is quit exciting.

[@WillMGucci]

Truly a great game that was waaaay ahead of its time !

[@javasrevenge7121]

WOWSers, I am seeing it back after so many years. I have spent many hours with this sim :)

[@hornest]

There was a truck convoy just north of the take off. Blowing 'em up with the machine gun animation was done really nice, compared to the other flight simulations at that times.

[@neutrino7704]

I seem to remember you could actually see the wheels come off the trucks.

[@ClassicTrialsChannel]

I first had it on the Atari ST. brilliant game

[@plechaim]

This looks cool

[@aegisgfx]

Hey I shot your triangle with a triangle, hey stop shooting at my triangle!

I just tried it again (on 28/08/2022) after 32 years of using with MiniMiga emulator. This time from hard disk. I can recall this was seriously advanced for its time. The nostalgia was better than the actual experience of the emulation. The same goes for the other WHDLoad Amiga games. I spent about an hour launching games I could only dream of as a teenager. The novelty quickly wore of. I much prefer 2022 tech.

[@MrComputerRetro]

It's the other way round for me. The novelty wears off quickly with new games, but I never get tired of the ones I played in the 80s and early 90s. Flight sims have come a long way though!

​@@MrComputerRetro TO make up for being so short in time the games from back in the 70/'s/80's was incredibly hard. Yesterday I tried a shoot 'em up, I think it was Strider for Amiga, only for five minutes. Zero tolerance for mistakes, touching an enemy = death. Back in 80's when we had unlimited time it was fun, now I just find it fun anymore. One of my favourite forms of entertainment is watching game playthroughs. Once I have unlimited time I might try Falcon again, but I highly doubt that I would last longer than ten minutes trying to master it again. Some of the Amiga flight sims frame rates get too fast . For example, I tried F1- Strike Eagle II yesterday on demo mode. It was silky smooth on 68030 but way too fast. BTW I have a full archive of emulators, game roms and the full collection of Amiga games played from hard disk with WHDLoad. No config is needed. Simply download the archive and launch UAE. My archive is 229Gb that I managed to download and conserve since 2007! Survived many HD failures by having it on multiple HDD, and now on cloud storage. You can download individual files, directories or the whole archive. No password required, no download limitations. If you try to download a whole map/directory the server will first create a zip file before you are prompted for download location, it may take a few seconds or several minutes for the download window to appear. I am afraid if I don't share my archive I am afraid it will be lost when I leave planet earth permanently (dead). If you don't trust my link open VPN, and put the browser in incognito. The link will open a browser window and you will see a regular folder structure. It took me several years to compile. Enjoy! disk.yandex.com/d/Zkz9Jt-Af8_Ftg

[@c.castro4630]

So is this different form Falcon AT? looks pretty similar

[@MrComputerRetro]

FalconAT was an improved version for IBM Compatibles, featuring EGA gfx instead of the original CGA. It's got many similarities with the Amiga/ST versions, such as external views. I only played if once for a few minutes and as far as I can remember, it had a much better flight model and different missions.

[@iad77]

Wasn't there a keyboard overlay too? 😅

[@MrComputerRetro]

No, not on this one. It was usually the Microprose games which had such overlays. It did have a keyboard reference card though.

[@iad77]

it might have been silent service 2 then haha@@MrComputerRetro

[@GiveMeAnOKUsername]

I couldn’t land, which was frustrating after doing a mission. As soon as the plane touched the runway it would crash. I think it was a bug.

[@MrComputerRetro]

The first version was a bit strict on the landing parameters, but you could land. The flight model though is generally bad, indeed.

[@GiveMeAnOKUsername]

Mr. Computer I may be imagining this, but I think I sent the disk back to get a new version. Upon its return, my first attempt at landing was the same story. Perhaps I was bad at landing.

[@MrComputerRetro]

@@GiveMeAnOKUsername Weren't we all? :-) I do remember reading something like that when I bought the mission disk. It said in the manual that after receiving complaints about the landing being too hard, they'd tweaked it in the new version. So, it probably really happened and you got a new disk.

[@sonyboy8638]

On the American version you where able to drop bombs on weddings and hospitals

[@MrComputerRetro]

Χαχα την κάτω φωτογραφία λες ε; Δεν το είχα σκεφτεί!