A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Screenshot from Crusade in Europe. © 1985 MicroProse Software Well, 2018 is almost over for those of us who live in the Americas, and I am glad! It's still morning in the subtropical state of Florida, and it looks like it's going to be one beautiful New Year's Eve day. It's mostly sunny as I write this, and the temperature outside is 71℉. If I don't get sucked into watching Star Wars; The Force Awakens,   or try to get some writing done, I might grab one of my many books and go read on the front porch later. Knowing myself well, though, it's quite likely that I'll probably end up taking a shower, change into comfortable but nice-looking clothes, then come back to my computer and play one of my favorite games for a couple of hours. Since I got my first computer 31 years ago (it was a gift from my paternal Uncle Sixto), I've always divided my time at my desk between "productivity" and "entertainment." Starting from the time wh...

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-impro...

Do you remember MicroProse Software’s F-15 Strike Eagle series of video games/simulators?  I sure do; the three editions of the classic game were among my favorite pastimes when I was younger and had several PCs that ran on the MS-DOS operating system. If you are old enough to have played DOS-based computer games in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, you probably played one of the now-gone (but not forgotten) Maryland software company co-founded by retired Air Force colonel John Wilbur (Wild Bill) Stealey, Sr. and legendary game designer Sid Meier, who is best known for creating Sid Meier’s Civilization and Sid Meier’s Pirates! F-15 Strike Eagle was the first sim in the series. (C) 1985 MicroProse Software The F-15 Strike Eagle franchise was launched in 1985 by its eponymous Meier-designed flight simulator for the Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64. A first-person perspective-based game dominated by a representation of a Heads-Up Display (HUD), F-15 Strike Eagle was al...

Actual screenshot of the "main title" sequence animation from F-15 Strike Eagle III. The graphics in the game itself are not that detailed; PCs didn't have the computing muscle back then to create that level of visual depth and realism. (C) 1992 MicroProse Software In March of 1993, shortly after my 30th birthday and a year after I bought my first MS-DOS-based personal computer (PC), I visited the Babbage's store at Miami International Mall to find the Desert Storm upgrade of MicroProse's F-15 Strike Eagle II combat flight simulator. Released in 1991 and co-designed by Sid ( Civilization ) Meier and Andy Hollis, the sequel to the original 1985 video game was a fun and exciting upgrade, but it sacrificed a great deal of realism to favor ease of play and to take into account the limits of late 1980s-early '90s PCs. I wasn't a dedicated gamer, so even though I received mailings from MicroProse because I used to register my games...