B-17 Flying Fortress: World War II Bombers in Action

This game is a pure nostalgia trip for me. I owned the game when it came out in 1992. In fact, I'm looking at the original box, manual, and 3.5" disks on my WW2 display shelf. My childhood consisted of this, Knights of the Sky, and Dynamix's Aces of the Pacific. It's everything I remember. Almost. The version released here on Steam is missing two options on the Configuration screen: Mechanical Reliability and Navigation. The original "original" had a heck of a time keeping on the flight plan even with correcting the AI navigator manually. A version update (yes, in 1992 Microprose mailed me a 3.5" update disk) added the option to set the navigation to "Faultless" so you didn't have to worry about being off target on the bomb run. I'm happy to say after two missions it seems that navigation is "faultless" on this Steam version. I made zero corrections en route and ended up smack dab on target each time. Getting home both times never happened, tho. First attempt to hit a rail yard near Laval resulted in getting bounced by FW-190's pretty hard (I had enemy fighters set to "Average"). Lost basically 3 of 4 engines and a fire in #4 that couldn't be extinguished without diving to put it out. Then #3 caught fire from an oil leak even though it was shut down but got hit again during combat. Dived a second time and put it out but now I'm at 1,300 ft. She ultimately succumbed to her wounds, stalled, and crashed with the loss of the entire crew. Second try with a new bomber was to hit the docks in Antwerp. I even turned down the enemy fighters to "Inexperienced" and still got shot up pretty good. Couple of crew got wounded, top turret got hit, and two more engine fires (this time the extinguishers worked). Same result tho....eventually the damage was just too much even as I tried to manually abort back home and I ended up bailing out. Yeah....I'm reliving my childhood. Just because it's old doesn't mean it's easy. Well worth the $9, IMO, and I can see it's gonna take some time to successfully get to 25 missions on a single bomber. I only ever finished one tour of duty with this game 29 years ago. I really am looking forward to trying to do it again.

First, this is a legacy game from 1992, with a modern launcher to tweak a few settings. It's not a remake or a reboot, it's the genuine original article made available for you to download and packaged up so that you don't need to install Windows 3.1 anymore. In 1992 this was a triple-A title. Consider for a second that the game came on a handful of floppy disks - that's 1.44 MB each, you whippersnappers - yet here is a game world spanning huge swathes of northern Europe. The level of game detail is really remarkable, so much that the manual was a 266-page glossy booklet, which discusses every aspect of the game's aircraft, from the fundamental principles of powered flight, to how to operate, navigate, fight and above all save the B17, or at least the crew, when things go wrong and everything is on fire. This is at its heart a game, but the sim model stands up really well, easily a match for contemporary flight simulators, and in some important ways more realistic - for instance, the plane can structurally fail and fall to bits (which I personally don't recall ever happening in MSFS '95). A real master-stroke of detail is engine management - first (as you'd certainly expect today), engines can be operated individually, or as a group. The vital stats for each engine is shown on authentic-style Instrument Panel on needle guages, with pairs of engines having their own needles but sharing a guage. If an engine is hit by flak or bandits it might catch fire or stall out right away, or it might spring an oil leak - this could be fast or slow, but over time the oil pressure drops and beyond a certain point the engine starts to overheat. Once this happens, if you don't shut it down it could catch fire, which can caust the wing to break up or explode. You have 2 options here, 1. use the built in fire extinguisher, which is not 100% reliable, or 2. go into a steep dive (!!!) to put the fire out. This is a WW2 authentic technique, working in a DOS game from 1992... yup. This game is also tough, and on higher difficulty settings can be really punishing - engine failure, fuel leaks, crew injuries, fires and mechanical failures occur frequently, and it can be frustrating failing a mission after a successful bomb run when you really didn't do anything particularly wrong. Keep in mind this is a WW2 strategic bombing simulator, and the odds of survival were not favourable then either - but the game does include some interesting narrative elements (with some fantastic pixel art) that can return surviving crew to the fight in case of a bailout or crash landing. Another original issue is the low graphics resolution which deprives you of any sense of distance to closing bandits on their attack run until they're really already firing at you - but I get around this by letting the AI take aim for me and then quickly take control for the kill once the bot starts firing. The Steam version does include some scaling options on the launcher - I haven't found any setup I think is really superior so I'd suggest trying them out to decide what works best for you. Honestly I think of this as a museum-piece I can still enjoy and appreciate for what it is, and I'm really pleased to have it in my Steam library at considerable less than the original retail price, let alone adjusted for inflation. For nostalgics like me it's a fun trip down memory lane and still as good as it always was. That said, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who enjoys cinema-quality graphics or a respawn-based game experience. This game wants you to try, learn, adapt and overcome, and even if you do all of that it'll still kick your butt on a regular basis.

Lots of fun! Surprisingly deep and satisfying. Features some beautiful pixel art. Here's hoping Microprose re-releases more golden oldies!

Old but Gold! I cant wait for the new One from Microprose. So much Memorys on this one here. Still worth it.

Great game for those who remember the good old days... Immersion at its best!

it is a grat game get it grat HA

One of my favourite games, a real classic!

I have no history with this game, so no nostalgia here. Haven't played this game at all before. When it was released here on Steam (2021), I noticed the cool pixel art, so I had to have this game in my Steam library. I played it a bit, it seems quite difficult. Because of the difficulty it reminded me a bit the Star Wars X-Wing games. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3247024402 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3247026005

bad

boring gameplay