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If you thought Space Ace was an expensive game, you've obviously never heard of the US Air Force's annual bombing competition. All you need is a couple dozen of the world's most expensive aircraft, a few supertankers full of fuel, and a billion dollar air traffic control system.
Activision's simulation of a simulation begins with the pilot picking his aircraft. Choose from the American Phantom, Soviet MiG-27, US F-111 (used to bomb Libya) and British Tornado. Amiga owners can also fly a F-15 Strike Eagle, Swedish Viggen, or another Tornado variant. You can then choose the enemy aircraft type – either the Gruman 'Top Gun' F-14, Soviet MiG-29 or US F-5 (plus the F-16 Falcon, Soviet Su-27, Mirage 2000 and MiG-31 for Amiga owners).

You may also name your pilot, and your performance is automatically saved when you crash or make a landing. But first you must arm your plane with missiles, bombs, and so on – the computer will do this for you if necessary. Confirm your choice and the missions are loaded in. To begin with you're qualified for just Free Flight (no enemy) and a Covert mission. There are four categories of mission, each containing four missions (two on the C64). Mission types are Covert, Tactical, Strategic, and Offensive.

Select a mission and a map appears – click on 'mission text' for a briefing, then find your target on the map. Amiga owners can access a 3-D recon fly-by of the target, as well as selecting air refuelling points (air refuelling is absent from the C64 game). Another Amiga advantage is the ability to design your own missions, placing a variety of targets, refuelling points etc. These missions can be saved to disk.

Once you've been fully briefed you can go into the game proper, sitting in the cockpit with the instruments before you (a different layout for virtually every plane). Besides the cockpit view, you can select satellite, tower, and tracking views of your plane with full zoom in/out. After that it's wheel-brakes off, thrust up to max, and up, up and away...

Zzap, Issue 59, March 1990, p.p.16-17

External views of the C64 aircraft show the program at its best, with attractive solid 3-D aircraft moving well over the landscape. It is particularly neat how the undercarriage retracts and the wings sweep back on swing-wing aircraft. But inside the cockpit you become irritated by the sluggish response, and bored by the dull scenery. The most exciting target is a bridge - a few lines, with no road or river in sight. The missions are tough, but there isn't much variety. Air-to-air combat also seem rather infrequent in the missions we've played.
On the Amiga the graphics aren't only more attractive, but much more importantly they move quickly and with detail – crucial for the ground targets. This makes the game a lot more fun, while more missions and a 'design mission' option improve lastability. It is a pity it's a simulation of a simulation (atmosphere is low as a consequence), and the lack of a complex, hilly terrain means low-level bombing isn't as realistic as it might be. Nevertheless, this is an extremely enjoyable game, which will keep you flying those missions long into the night.


Vektor Grafix have made a massive leap from Star Wars to Fighter Bomber, one which is extremely successful on the Amiga at least. Long missions become much shorter when you spend so much time zooming around your polygon-packed aircraft via various exterior views. The realism of flight control is much lower, but at least this makes the game instantly playable.
Once into the game the variety of missions soon impresses; in some there's a tight time limit for destroying several different targets. Often the target is ver specific – hit the tent, not just one of the jeeps beside it. So while it's easy to fly (and land, fortunately), the game is far from a push-over. You even have to land the right way down the runway to successfully complete a mission! Fighter Bomber looks good, plays very well indeed and serves as a good introduction to flight sims. Listen out for the rock guitar 'jamming' session at the start, it's great!!
While the 64 game has eight missions and near 16-bit presentation it lacks extensive ground detail leading to dull play and with it repetition on a grand scale (Project: Stealth Fighter still reigns supreme). Yeah, it's technically very impressive with its fast moving polygons, but 64 Fighter Bomber is shot out of the sky by dead gameplay.


What's happening? All of a sudden flight sims have become fun. Fighter Bomber is even easier to get into than F-29, simpler to fly and you can't die (the program merely increases your number of crashes from 100 to 101!). Both Amiga and C64 games offer plenty of options with some great exterior views. The Amiga game is extremely fast and great fun to play. Particularly good are the engine noises which vary according to thrust and aircraft type. The screens where you choose your weapons are great too, on both machines, it's a pity we didn't have more space to show them.
The C64 game has some impressive aircraft graphics, and there's some nice detail on some of the targets too. But the aircraft handles too slowly for it to be as exciting as it should be. Possibly solid 3-D was too ambitious for this type of game on the C64.

64
PRESENTATION 84%
Automatic save of pilot's performance is good disk feature. 30-page manual informative on real aircraft rather than game. Cassette owners get the complete C64 game, but multiload is very heavy. Mark is for the disk game!
GRAPHICS 70%
Nice aircraft graphics and control panel, but movement is sluggish and targets are unexciting.
SOUND 62%
Basic engine roar and explosions.
HOOKABILITY 64%
Couldn't be easier to get airborne, but the first mission is both difficult and dull.
LASTABILITY 57%
Eight missions and little variety in the ground targets restrict long-term appeal.

OVERALL
63%
Sluggish solid 3-D dulls the excitement of combat.

AMIGA
PRESENTATION 92%
Choice of your aircraft and enemy planes shown in in-game 3-D and 2-D drawings. Recon target option. No disk swapping in-game. Design mission option.
GRAPHICS 89%
Very good aircraft, impressive air-fuelling section, and quite good targets.
SOUND 90%
Jamming guitar intro music, great engine roar changing according to thrust, nice explosion and undercarriage FX.
HOOKABILITY 90%
16-bit speed make the first mission both easier and much more fun.
LASTABILITY 91%
16 missions, chance of winning trophy and option to design your own mission adds up to long-lasting appeal. Also, Advanced Mission Disks are planned.

OVERALL
90%
A great intro to flight sims with good long-term appeal.

Title Fighter Bomber
Game Type Flight sim
Publisher Activision
Players 1
Compatibility OCS
HD Installable No
Submission Dante Mendes De Patta (dante@fastlane.com.br)

Review
Around 1989-1990, there was some flight sims disputing the Amiga games
market, some are very well known, and others... not too much. I think
that Fighter Bomber is a bit of an unknown flight sim today, and wasn't a
big hit when it was released, 9 years ago... It was not as successful as
Falcon, F19 Steath Fighter or F/A-18 Interceptor...but here in my country
(Brazil), it was the favorite one, I really dunno why, but Fighter Bomber
was nice anyway.

Lets see: it has 8 jet fighters to choose from (F-111, Saab Viggen,
Tornado, F15 Eagle...), each with their own weapons and their own, nice
painted cockpit. After choosing your plane, you can also choose what plane
the enemy will fly, from another range of planes (including Mig-29,
Tomcat, Sukhoi Su-27...). In the selection menu, you can choose to view
the planes in a 2D-painted artwork or rotating in the real-time 3D engine
(very impressive for that time).

Then, you proceed to the arming screen, where you can choose from a really
impressive range of weapons. All this presented with top quality graphics,
very good interface and, really, all this presentation put this game well
above the other current titles in the market at that time (perhaps only
Falcon can match it in this issue).

The first time I saw this game, the guy that was playing it was very good
and experienced, showing all the external camera views and doing a really
'cinematic' low-level flying while locking and firing Maverick missiles in
bridges and buildings! It was really, really impressive (and I was very
used to MSX and Spectrum flight sims back in that time...)

The 3D objects are the best of that batch of flight sims, specially the
external views, with glowing afterburners, landing gear going up and down
smoothly, and it was the first flight sim to show the sweep-wings of a
Tornado or F-111 working! The frame rate was rather slugguish in an A500
(so, many people will stay the smoother graphics in F29 Retaliator)

It was also the first flight sim (as far as I know) to include air-to-air
refuelling, and it was great! Again, Falcon, F/A-18, F19 and so on cannot
match it in this issue...

The scenary was a bit boring, flat green with the usual "pyramids" as
mountains, but there was also a nice and complex 3D object of Mount
Rushmore to fly over.

The gameplay was a bit simple for a flight sim (I think that's why it was
successful here), the plane is easy to control, the weapons are easy to
use (just lock and press fire - it will hit the target anyway), and there
was some interesting missions, such as the one to destroy the nuclear
missile before they fire it - there was even a timer on the top of the
cockpit, with a countdown for the nuclear missile launch!

One of the best features was the Mission Builder: it enabled the player to
create their own missions, placing enemy units in strategic places,
marking primary and secondary targets, placing the refuel plane...you can
zoom in and out over the units in the battlefield, really excellent! And
you can also type the mission briefing text, save it to disk and send to
your friends, to see if they can beat your ultra-dangerous top-secret
mission =) Really cool stuff, I never saw another feature of this kind in
other Amiga flight sims...a shame.

But, there was a thing I hated in that flight sim: the fact that there was
not any "accelerated time" option. In other words: in many missions, you
took ages to reach the target area...

My second complaint was the dogfights, they're very poorly represented:
The enemy plane just circles around you at around Mach 2 (!), even at very
low altitude (impossible in real life), and if you feel bored with the
enemy fighter, you can just lock a missile and press fire, it'll be game
over for him. Also, if you've wasted all your missiles in something else,
you can just break, wait for him to pass *through* your plane (yes, there
aren't mid air collisions!), and hold the guns fire, it will explode as
soon it passes through your plane... :)

Despite the complaints above, it was a good and fun flight sim, good to
impress your friends at that time, due to the great detail and
presentation, but for a good flight feeling and dogfights, I prefer F/A-18
or Falcon :)

Also, a final remark: I think this game was released in the US with the
title "Strike Aces", and the title "Fighter Bomber" was used for the
European market.