Old Gamers Never Die: Flying Into Battle with MicroProse Software's 'F-15 Strike Eagle II'
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| Cover art for the 1991 re-release of the DOS edition of F-15 Strike Eagle II. (C) 1989, 1991 MicroProse Software |
I was a huge fan of MicroProse's games during the company's Golden Era; by the late 1980s, Meier and Stealey's company was among the top five game developers in the United States, partly due to the critical and popular success of two of MicroProse's game series: Silent Service and F-15 Strike Eagle. I ought to know, because I owned and played every game in those two "franchises" between 1987 (when I had an Apple II computer) and the mid-1990s (when I supplemented my Apple II with a custom-built DOS/Windows-based PC "clone").
The first game in the series, F-15 Strike Eagle, was originally released for various platforms (Apple II, Commodore 64, Atari, and Amstrad) but was later "ported" to IBM/DOS systems when MicroProse made the corporate decision to develop games for PCs based on the industry's dominant operating system. I had the Apple II 8-bit version of F-15 Strike Eagle, which was my first (and for a while, my only) flight simulator for that computer.
F-15 Strike Eagle was, for its time, a fairly sophisticated combat flight simulation. It wasn't so realistic that it required you to go to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and take flight courses, but it included realistic flight models and simulated three types of enemy fighters (Su-22, MiG-21, and MiG-23) and three surface-to-air missile systems, including the SAM-2 and SAM-7.
F-15 Strike Eagle also allowed you to fly missions in four theaters of operation: Libya, Vietnam, the Middle East, and the Persian Gulf. The locales and targets varied, but the missions were essentially variations on the theme of "air-ground' strikes. No matter which mission you chose, you had to fly your plane from either a land base (realistic) or aircraft carrier (which was solely an in-game convention, especially in the Vietnam missions; the titular F-15 Strike Eagle is a land-based two-seat Air Force strike fighter only, not a Navy aircraft) to two targets: the Primary and Secondary Target.
When you reached either the Primary or the Secondary Target (ideally both), you dropped a "stick" of three Mark 82 "slick" bombs to destroy it. If you made successful bomb runs and still had bombs left, you were free to attack targets of opportunity before returning to your base or carrier.
The graphics were primitive by today's standards, but the game designers compensated for this by programming F-15 Strike Eagle with realistic flight models. Again, MicroProse did not make the game as realistic as some of its competitors could and often did, but F-15 Strike Eagle factored in some of its real-life counterpart's performance envelope. As a result, pilots had to learn about maneuvering in combat, managing fuel consumption, and avoiding stalls, crashes, and getting hit by missiles or cannon fire from enemy fighters.
The game also taught players about the pros and cons of the weapons systems in F-15 Strike Eagle, which were limited to the following:
- AIM-7M Sparrow semi-active radar homing air-to-air missile
- AIM-9L Sidewinder heat seeking infrared air-to-air missile
- M-61 Vulcan 20 mm Gatling-style cannon
- Mark 82 500 lb. "dumb" (unguided) bombs, in three-bomb racks
Though it was not a historically-accurate game (the F-15 was not in service in Vietnam, and Israel did not get its first Eagles till the early 1980s), F-15 Strike Eagle got most of the basic concepts of military air tactics right, and it was both a commercial and critical hit. It was so successful, in fact, that when MicroProse devoted more attention to developing games for the newer 16-bit IBM/DOS PCs in the late 1980s, its in-house game design unit, MPS Labs, created a sequel, F-15 Strike Eagle II.
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Screenshot of the credits screen, F-15 Strike Eagle II. (C) 1989 MicroProse Software
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Designed by MicroProse's now-legendary co-founder Sid Meier with Andy Hollis, F-15 Strike Eagle II was published in 1989. It kept the original game's concept (a simplified - though not simplistic - combat flight simulator of the McDonnell-Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle, a two-seat fighter-bomber variant of America's third-generation fighter aircraft) and setting (Libya, Vietnam, the Middle East, and the Persian Gulf).
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| Although the graphics are rudimentary compared to those of, say, Locked On, F-15 Strike Eagle II's look was an improvement over its "wire raster" ancestor's 1985-era graphics. (C) 1989 MicroProse Software |
As in the Silent Service series, the new version of F-15 Strike Eagle was demonstrably more advanced than its precursor. It took advantage of more powerful computers with better graphics and sound cards, and benefitted from the introduction of faster and more versatile CPUs like Intel's 386.
Consequently, Meier and Hollis were able to give players a more powerful arsenal of fire-and-forget weapons that reduced a player's time on a bombing run. Instead of the Mark 82 "dumb bombs" used in the original version of F-15 Strike Eagle, you now had six AGM-65 Maverick air-to-ground missiles. And to fend off enemy fighters, Eagle pilots could bring two fire-and-forget air-to-air missiles: the short-range heat-seeking Sidewinder and the new active radar homing medium range AIM-120 AMRAAM.
Again, the game aimed for a balanced mix of playability and realism, but sacrificed a great deal of historical accuracy by (a) basing an F-15E aboard a carrier for some missions in the Libya and Vietnam theaters, and (b) creating anachronisms by allowing players to fly the Strike Eagle over Vietnam or Libya.
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Essentially, the game is a more muscular version of the original F-15 Strike Eagle, set in the same four theaters of operation. There was an option to add other scenarios if (in the first edition) you knew how to copy selected game files from MicroProse's F-19 Stealth Fighter or (in later editions) if your package contained a Scenario Disk with new battles based on the 1991 Desert Storm air campaign.
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Like most of the MicroProse games that I've owned or played, F-15 Strike Eagle II allows you to play the game at different levels of difficulty. It starts at Rookie, with a very forgiving flight model, less aggressive AI-guided enemy forces, and easy "automatic landing" features. Once you successfully fly one mission in each of the four basic theaters of operation, the game "promotes" you not just in Air Force rank but also in skill level. So, if you start out at Rookie, then the next level is Pilot, then on to Ace. Each level gets progressively harder; enemy forces become more aggressive and deadlier; your weapons become slightly less reliable and/or effective; and the conditions for "automatic landing" are more challenging.
As in Silent Service and M-1 Tank Platoon, you earned commendations and promotions depending on how well you did. MicroProse assigned "efficiency points" to all its military games; how many points you received after every mission depended on:
- Hitting both Primary and Secondary targets
- Shooting down enemy aircraft
- Hitting targets of opportunity
- Avoiding damage from enemy defenses
- Skill level selected
- Avoiding "Blue-on-Blue" friendly fire situations
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| In this screenshot from a Persian Gulf mission, I have just shot down an Iranian F-4E Phantom II fighter-bomber. Note the polygon 3-D shapes and easy-to-understand multi-function displays. State-of-the-art for 1989, but primitive by 2018 standards. (C) 1989 MicroProse Software |
I played this game many times, mainly on other people's PCs until I finally got my own custom-built 386-based DOS PC in 1992. I never mastered it; the best I could do on F-15 Strike Eagle II was to finish all of the Pilot level missions in all four theaters and achieved the rank of Captain with a bunch of low- to mid-ranking commendations no higher than the Air Medal. I don't recall finishing the Ace level; by then (late 1992) I had purchased F-15 Strike Eagle III, the third (and last) entry in the series.
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| Enemy military transport, bearing 152 degrees! (C) 1989 MicroProse Software |
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| Look, Mom and Dad! I earned a promotion! (C) 1989 MicroProse Software |
Bottom Line
For its time, F-15 Strike Eagle II was one of the best flight simulations/video games available. Admittedly, it was more of the latter than it was the former; the cockpit layout, flight controls, weapons payload, and multi-function displays were not designed to replicate the real F-15E Strike Eagle. Emphasis was on game play first, with a secondary focus on reality-based flight models and plane/weapons-system performance. There was no player-activated Weapons Systems Operator functionality; the only nod to the existence of a WSO was a "rear view" shot that showed a pixelated back-seater behind the pilot, but a player could not "sit in the back seat" as in the later F-15 Strike Eagle III. In other words, F-15 Strike Eagle II was an interim game between the first game of the series (which didn't even bother with a WSO graphic, due to the computing limitations of 8-bit machines like the Apple II) and the last, which was so realistic that I felt like I'd gone through Undergraduate Pilot Training in the Air Force.
Still, if you accepted its conventions, F-15 Strike Eagle II was a good, entertaining game. It had nice graphics for a game of the late 1980s, and it was more challenging and grounded in reality than, say, Afterburner. It depicted real-world scenarios based on historical conflicts, and if you could forgive the designers for some of the artistic license they took, F-15 Strike Eagle II gave you a taste of what aerial combat was all about. And, more important, it was fun.
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