F-16 Combat Pilot

Review (03/1990)

Electronic Arts' new F-16 Combat Pilot has the potential to be a hot program. At first glance, it looks like it could give Spectrum HoloByte's Falcon a run for the money — it has air- and ground-attack missions, advanced instrumentation, and even a commander mode where you command an entire F-16 squadron.

Unfortunately, F-16 Combat Pilot is a splendid example of all the things you shouldn't do when creating an Amiga game. The graphics look like a port from the Atari ST version. The through-the-window view is the worst of all the Amiga combat-flight simulators. And you have to swap disks to store your pilot log because the program won-t recognize a second disk drive.

Besides drive-grinding disk-based copy protection, you're requires to look up a word in the manual, too. The manual protection is terribly complicated, requiring you to find a certain word in a certain paragraph on a page. However, there's no indication if partial paragraphs and headlines are to be counted. I still haven't figured out EA's system; I get it right one out of three tries.

Worst of all, the program will only run on Amigas with a 68000 procassor. If you have a 68010 or an accelerator card, you're out of luck. This wasn't just an overlooked programming error, either: The outside of the box states that the program "doesn't support advanced processor options." Come on, EA! You wouldn't release an IBM program that ran only on an 8088 machine.