F-16 Fighting Falcon
System: SMS
Release Date: October 1986
Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega
Genre: Flight Sim
We’ve gotten to the flight sim portion of our chronological playthrough with F-16 Fighting Falcon on Sega Master System. A good portion of my time with this game was figuring out how to set it up properly to play. It requires two controllers in order to control your F-16 properly. Controller 1 controls your pitch, yaw, and roll in ways that are not always clear. Controller 2 controls your acceleration and deceleration, allowing for rapid variants of each. Controller 1 also switches and fires weapons, while controller 2 allows for electronic countermeasures, changing your lock-on target, and going into autopilot.
It would have been really cool if I could have figured out how to configure it so I could map both SMS controllers to one Xbox controller, but I couldn’t get it to work. My keyboard sufficed as controller 2. You start the game and choose one of 10 levels. Higher levels have both more planes to destroy and more planes on screen at once.
The manual is very explicit about needing to understand your heads up display and instrument panel and it is absolutely correct. The top of the HUD is your compass, the left side tells you your speed, the right side shows your altitude. It helps you target your enemies if you use that information along with the radar in the lower right corner. This tracks one of the enemy MIG-25 Foxbats on the stage. You can easily find your way to them if you line up your numbers.
Once you find an enemy, you have two weapons to choose from to blow him out of the sky. You can use missiles, which work if you’re fully locked on and farther away. Or you can use the 20mm machine guns, which only work when you’re close up. I was having a lot of trouble with the missiles, but on further inspection, I believe if I launched a missile and then changed to guns, the missile would just blow up. Both you and your enemies can take nine shots from the machine gun before going down.
There will come a time that your warning lights come on, indicating a missile launch in your direction. This is when you would use your electronic countermeasures. Trying to evade a missile manually is a recipe for disaster. If you do get hit, you still have time to eject, which doesn’t save you or anything, but does allow you to add to your score.
Graphics: 1.0
We’re talking text and wireframe skies. Nothing attractive here.
Sound: 1.0
Just the sound of the engine, gun fire, and warning sirens.
Gameplay: 2.0
It’s a flight sim, alright. Controls are complicated, but achieve their goal.
Difficulty: 3.0
Figuring out how to make your plane work correctly is integral to success. Once you get the gist of it, you get better.
Fun Factor: 2.5
I was frustrated at first, but once I got the controls working, I liked it. If I could map both controller ports to my gamepad, that would be great.
Overall Grade: 1.9
F-16 Fighting Falcon earns a C. It’s an early flight sim that is bare bones. I’d be interested in an upgraded version in the future. Heck, I might try this one again soon.