Old Gamers Never Die: More Musings About 'F-15 Strike Eagle III'

Screenshot from F-15 Strike Eagle III, Panama Campaign.  All images are (C) 1992 MicroProse Software

As much as I love computers, I sometimes get frustrated with how quickly they become obsolescent. I read somewhere that advances in computing technology are so fast that the PCs we buy now (say, October of 2018) will already be "old tech" by January of 2020, if not sooner.  In the 1990s I went through at least five computers in less than eight years for one reason or another (new operating systems came out; new chips replaced older, slower ones, better graphics cards/soundcards came out; CD-ROM replaced floppies; the list is freakin' endless). 

And because I was getting a new PC every year or so (mostly inexpensive ones built from storebought parts), I found that some of the  DOS-based games I played in my spare time didn't work on newer machines. 

I miss quite a few of those old DOS-based games, especially those that were never got new-and-improved versions (Crusade in Europe comes easily to mind.)  Some, like Tom Clancy's SSN, only worked well once on Windows 98 but were incompatible with newer operating systems. Others, such as F-15 Strike Eagle III, were allegedly going to be upgraded, only to end up becoming the last of their series when their publisher (MicroProse) went through a series of owners in the mid-1990s and early 2000s before closing its doors. (I still have the install diskettes, but because they are 3.5-inch floppies, they are useless to me, 

Happily, I recently discovered this cool site called Classic Reload (www.ClassicReload.com), where the owners have found and lovingly preserved over 6000 old DOS games from the 1980s and 1990s. There, if Classic Reload has them in its catalog, you can play some of your favorites straight from your browser (Chrome or Mozilla Firefox are recommended.)

I happened to find this site after trying, without success, to find F-15 Strike Eagle III and other older MicroProse games on Steam. Retroism, the game label that reissues some of MicroProse's 1990s games, doesn't offer F-15 Strike Eagle III or some of the others that I owned and loved, although they do have Silent Service II, another old favorite of mine.

I signed up this week as a member of Classic Reload, so I've been able to reconnect with F-15 Strike Eagle III and a couple of my other DOS games.   

I have already reviewed F-15 Strike Eagle III, but I'd like to share a few more thoughts about the game.

After much trial and error, I finally found the right keyboard command to look "down" at the third multi-function display and engine/fuel status gauges.  (Note: the game is in easy mode; the TEWS screen is in color and shows the easy-to-interpret symbols ported over from F-15 Strike Eagle II.)

The first thing that comes to mind is how easy it's been to remember the basics of how to play the game, especially since the game manual and the Quick Reference Card are either in an unpacked box or got thrown in the trash (by me). F-15 Strike Eagle III is not as realistic a flight simulator as F-14 Fleet Defender (a 1994 game I purchased but couldn't get to run properly on any of my DOS PCs), but it's not as easy to learn or master as, say, the more video game-like F-15 Strike Eagle II.  I must have played F-15 Strike Eagle III a lot when I had the PC with the proper mix of drives to operate this game because it's only taken me three days to recall all of the keyboard commands to "fly" my Strike Eagle.

Another look "down" at the MFDs below the Heads-Up Display. Here, the aircraft is in Air-Ground Mode (note the AG is lit up, and the MFDs indicate weapons status (top left), the displays are mostly on Authentic mode (they're monochromatic, not color), although the TEWS is still set on Easy level.

Another mindblowing concept: The Panama Theater has the strangest of the three scenarios (the other two are Desert Storm and Return to Korea) in the game. As I recall, the manual had a backstory in which M-19 leftist guerrillas, in conjunction with drug dealers, had established a sanctuary of sorts in Panama's jungle-covered border with Colombia. Conservative politicians and overly enthused military officers in Bogota decided to launch a limited invasion of Panama to clear out the guerrillas.

I don't quite remember how or why the scenario added Venezuela (which was not yet a leftist-leaning clone of Castro's Cuba in 1993) into the mix, but in the Strike Eagle universe, the Colombian Army went beyond its stated goals and decided to - with allies in Caracas - conquer Panama in its entirety, thus setting up a conflict with the U.S. over control of the Panama Canal. 

Splash one Dragonfly.  U.S.-built A-37 goes down in flames after being hit by an AIM-9M Sidewinder missile.

My guess is just as good as anyone's as to why Colombia and Venezuela were chosen as adversaries in the game, but here's my theory.  Desert Storm and Return to Korea both show a lot of Soviet hardware, although Iraq also fielded a few French-made Mirage F-1s in its air force. Both Iraq (under Saddam Hussein) and North Korea bought a lot of Russian planes and equipment and for the most part, the U.S. has fought most of its post-World War II conflicts against former Soviet client states.

But the U.S. and other Western countries have made a lot of money selling weapons to other nations, especially in Latin America. So what F-15 Strike Eagle III seems to ask in its Panama scenario is this: What would happen if American pilots have to be deployed in a region equipped mostly with American and European military equipment, and they have to fight against U.S.-trained pilots?

Anyway, although the scenario is challenging and fun to play, it is a strange one - and on many levels. After all, Colombia is one of the U.S.'s staunchest allies in Latin America, and it is unlikely that a rational Colombian leadership would ever invade Panama.

Most importantly, my family is from Colombia, so it feels really weird flying over a digitized version of my ancestral lands and wreaking all sorts of havoc on its sovereign territory with bombs and missiles.

Cali. as depicted in F-15 Strike Eagle III. I had to bomb a military HQ there. Sorry, guys!