F-15 Strike Eagle

1984 · Simulation · Atari 8-bit / Multiple

Overview

F-15 Strike Eagle (1984) is Sid Meier's combat flight simulator for MicroProse, which sold more than 1.5 million copies across home computers, consoles and an arcade version.

Deep Dive

The player picks a theatre — Libya, the Persian Gulf or Vietnam — and starts already airborne in an F-15 armed with missiles, bombs, drop tanks, flares and chaff. The task is to bomb a primary and a secondary target while fighting off enemy fighters, and the mission ends with a crash, a shoot-down or a return to base.

Developer Story

Sid Meier designed it, and it appeared first on Atari 8-bit computers in 1984, followed by Apple II, Commodore 64, PC and Atari ST versions. A 1991 arcade version ran on the TMS34010 graphics processor, and NES, Game Boy and Game Gear ports followed. Sales passed 250,000 by March 1987 and a million by 1989.