Falcon

About Falcon

Falcon (1987) is Spectrum HoloByte's acclaimed F-16 combat flight simulator, praised by a real F-16 pilot for its accuracy and the start of a long-running series.

Falcon in Depth

The first official entry in Spectrum HoloByte's Falcon series of F-16 simulators, not counting 1984's F-16 Fighting Falcon, gives players a choice of 12 missions, with awards for flying at higher skill levels. Air-to-air and ground-attack weapons are limited in realistic ways. AIM-9J missiles, usually the only ones available, are less reliable than newer AIM-9Ls and useless head-on; guided AGM-65 missiles are easier to use than Mk 84 "iron" bombs but ineffective against hardened targets; and an ECM pod protects against missiles but takes up a hardpoint that could carry weapons or fuel. The enemy holds the western part of a square map divided into nine smaller squares.

Enemy targets are fixed ground sites, defended by MiG-21 interceptors, SA-2 missiles from known fixed sites and portable SA-7s that can appear anywhere. Compute! joked in 1989 that it "seemed harder to fly than the real plane", and an update that year reportedly made control and landings much easier. The Atari ST and Amiga versions add a semi-dynamic campaign in which the player roams the airspace hunting enemy aircraft and ground targets, destroyed buildings and SAM sites stay down for a time, and ground forces fight back and forth, along with two expansion sets, Operation: Counterstrike and Operation: Firefight.

Making Falcon

Sphere, Inc. developed it for the Macintosh and PC in 1987, and Rowan Software ported it to the Atari ST in 1988 and the Amiga in 1989; a CDTV version followed in 1992, along with a colour Macintosh update and a simplified TurboGrafx-16 version by Turbo Technologies. Computer Gaming World called it one of the most detailed and accurate flight simulators on the microcomputer market, Dragon gave it five stars, and Compute! praised its graphics, realism and documentation, while Atari ST User called it "one of the most polished flight sims that I've ever come across". Electronic Gaming Monthly gave the TurboGrafx-16 version 4.5 out of 10, finding the compromises made to fit a 4 MB cartridge left it awkward and dull.