Falcon (computer game)

The Falcon line of computer games is a series of simulations of the F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter aircraft. The games were developed and published by Spectrum HoloByte (later MicroProse). They were noted for their high level of realism unseen in contemporary simulation games.

Major Versions

There were five major versions of "Falcon":

* "Falcon" (1987)
* "Falcon AT" (1988)
* "Falcon 3.0" (1991)
* "Falcon 4.0" (1998)
* "" (2005)

Version Trivia

Falcon was originally programmed by Gilman Louie for the MSX (1984, under title of "F-16 Fighting Falcon") and Macintosh (1985 as "Falcon"), and used bitmapped 3D MiG-21s as adversaries. This was several years before Origin's Wing Commander used a similar graphics engine. It was ported to the PC later, but no longer used bitmapped graphics. Instead, the adversaries became primitive polygons instead.

Falcon AT claims to be one of the first flight sims to use EGA graphics. Other than that, it wasn't that different from Falcon (1.0).

The Atari ST and Amiga versions of Falcon are completely separate products from Falcon AT and Falcon 3.0. They have two "mission disks" for them, Operation: Counterstrike, and Operation: Firefight. Both featured a semi-dynamic campaign where you can roam the airspace, sweep for hostile aircraft, and attack ground targets. Destroyed buildings and SAM sites remain destroyed for fixed period of time, and hostile and friendly forces engage each other on the ground back and forth.

Falcon 3.0 claims to have used flight dynamics from a real military simulator, and required a math coprocessor to enable the high fidelity flight mode. It retained its status as the most realistic flight simulation game for years. It also has a "dynamic campaign" mode where you can contribute to the war effort by performing missions.

Falcon 3.0 spawned several expansion packs including planes such as F/A-18, MiG-29, and the Japanese F-X, and even a video tutorial that teaches aerial dogfighting basics called "Art of the Kill", which used Falcon 3.0's built-in ACMI recorder to reconstruct engagements, explain tactics and counter-tactics. Falcon 3.0 was also the subject of dozens of aftermarket books, some written by actual F-16 pilots. Only Microsoft Flight Simulator series spawned more books.

Falcon series was re-released in 1994 as "Falcon Gold", with previously mentioned "Art of the Kill" video digitized and included on the CD collection, along with announcement for Falcon 4.0.

Falcon series were noted for their early multiplayer support, as even the first version supported two players via a null modem serial port connection.

Falcon 4 has been in production since 1992, and was finally released in 1998, making it one of the longest games in development.

Falcon 4 was the source of much controversy due to source code being leaked from MicroProse in the year 2000. In the years between the source code leak and the release of Allied Force (2005), many "unofficial" tweaks were released by the online community to fix bugs and enhance the game for modern systems.

Many of these enhancements have found their way into Allied Force and Free Falcon, which is a freeware version that requires an original 1998 falcon 4.0 install and an update called 108 US patch. (the last official patch for Falcon 4.0 developed by Microprose)

External links

*
* [http://www.graphsim.com/games-falcon-af.html Falcon 4: Allied Force] at Graphsim Entertainment