F29 Retaliator

F-29 Retaliator was a popular military flight simulator for Amiga (1989) and PC (1991). The general idea behind this title was to boost player's imagination how futuristic air combat shall look like. The game offers two flyable aircraft, one was prototype of what shall much later become F-22 and another is Grumman's proof of concept X-29, that actually never served as a combat aircraft. The background story is that the USAF is fielding two advanced multi purpose jets in critical global hot spots with the idea that these advanced aircraft and their highly trained pilots shall inflict disproportional loses to any potential enemy for each aircraft lost. You are one such pilot. In the pilot roster you can enter your name and select your rank. If you select the lowest rank you'll have unlimited weapons, but you shall lose that advantage with your first promotion, so the game actually forces you to learn to play competently. Back in the time Dragon Computer Gaming World described this game as: "less-expensive alternative which still offers a solid game-playing experience, with limitations". Indeed game maps here were rather small compared to what Micro Prose offered in the F-19 Stealth fighter, however this game also offers very advanced concepts such as enemy aircraft deploying countermeasures or multiple game endings based on your in game performance and choices you've made which was unheard of in late eighties. AI flies their aircraft competently and just pulling on flight stick absolutely does not guarantee you success in dogfights. Simplified aircraft defensive systems are also present, you can drop flares (V button), you can toggle ECM on (E button), this shall alert enemy to your presence but shall also reduce the range they can effectively engage you, or stealth (S button) which stops all emissions from your sensors so the enemy aircraft are oblivious to your presence unless they stumble upon you head on. You also have no idea where enemy aircraft are so using your eyeballs MK.I is strongly encouraged in stealth mode. The game has a weird copyright protection. Without the manual you don't know what mission objectives are, so you can't play campaigns in any meaningful way. Since this was a popular title in its heyday fans have published manual on several webpages. To give you a quick fix I'll tell you how to pass the first day in the Pacific campaign: Mission 1 - Scramble: Shot down two enemy aircraft in map sector 4D flying towards your airbase. Mission 2 - Operation Firebolt: Shot down three enemy aircraft attacking the oil refinery in map sector 8D. Mission 3 - Operation Drop-in: Sink the enemy battleship in map sector 4G (beware the battleship has anti aircraft missiles) Mission 4 - Operation Plunge: Attack the enemy oil drums in map sector 2E. The game shall also ask you a security question in connection with in game missions but you can type anything - this version of the game is cracked. Missing content: British ZERO gaming magazine published by the Dennis Publishing Ltd. offered an add on disc in 1990 containing the additional campaign where you are expected to deal with a full scale alien invasion. This add on campaign served effectively as an advertisement to DiD's upcoming title Epic. Sadly that campaign is not included here.

This is the first multi-PC multiplayer (through COM-port) flight sim I played as a kid and hoped that it would somehow support multiplayer over the internet (even though it is not mentioned by Steam). Would recommend only to buy for nostalgia.

I used to play this a lot as a kid but was never able to land. Among my friends it was a myth that it was actually possible and that someone had done it. Finally, 30 years later, I got the game again and landed on a first try.

une piécette pour réessayer un jeu sur lequel j'ai passé des heures au début des années 90. C'est quand même un simulateur extrèmement primaire. Je met "non-recommandé" car mis à part l'aspect nostalgie, le jeu est tout de même totalement obsolète.

игра конечно интересная на не хватает обновлений слегка

I played this game on an 286 mhz CPU with 1 mb of RAM. Now it requires 1ghz CPU and 512mb ram. We truly live in the future :D