Falcon

Falcon: The F-16 Fighter Simulation is a flight-sim developed by Sphere and published by Spectrum Holobyte initially for MS-DOS and Macintosh in 1987. Two years later, it was ported to Amiga and Atari ST.

In this game, you can pilot the famous F-16 jet in different missions, including air-to-air and air-ground battles. Many aspects of the plane are reproduced faithfully, including the electronic displays and radars. Even the enemy movements were programmed with artificial intelligence to simulate the realistic behavior of pilots. The result was incredibly advanced, considering that the game was released in 1987.

Despite some critics, primarily due to the game's difficulty, Spectrum Holobyte won several awards for Falcon, which was voted Best Technical Achievement, and Best Action-adventure in 1987. When the game was released on the Amiga, with much-improved graphics compared to the monochrome Macintosh version and CGA/Tandy graphics of the DOS one, more awards arrived. Falcon won the Golden Joystick as Best Simulation in 1989.

Amiga users often compared Falcon to F/A-18 Interceptor, another combat flight-sim released at the end of the 80; the two games have a different approach: F/A-18 is an arcade flight-sim, while Falcon is more realistic. Despite the rivalry, they are both great games. Now you don't have to choose anymore: try them both!