Mastertronic
£2.99

Get up, up and away with the second of the new Mastertronic games for use with a Magnum Lightphaser. F-16 Fighting Falcon is a thrilling 3-D flight combat game, along the lines of Afterburner. You take part in air-to-air and air-to-ground combat using weapons such as heatseekers and sidewinders to blow Soviet MIGs out of the sky.

The detailed graphics of the F-16 and the enemies that fly towards it give the game a very professional feel. The ground below flies by at high speeds in a realistic way - the only trouble is it's all in glorious yellow monochrome (aww). Sound is not too impressive either, the effects are very basic and the tune drives you mad after a couple of plays.

The playability of the game using the lightgun is severely reduced. The idea is to shoot the F-16 when you want it to move. The inlay says it will take 'automatic, intelligent evasive action'. In fact the F-16 either stays put and ploughs into an oncoming chopper, or blows up!

Using the normal control method improves the game a bit, but there's nothing new about flying around shooting things, is there? If you're desperate for lightgun games then give this a whirl, but you will have to be pretty desperate!

This one is an Afterburner clone in which you shoot at all the incoming fighters and missiles, and shoot at your own F16 to make it perform what the manual calls "automatic intelligent evasive action". Hmm. Just looks like it bounces out of the way if you ask me.

The scenery scrolls by underneath you as you fly along blasting the poop out of anything that moves and a few things that don't Trouble is you don't get much time to anticipate a plane coming on to the screen, and, if you leave it too late to blow it up, it gets a chance to launch its missiles at you. There are four levels to the game, over the Sahara, Tropics, Arctic and Ocean. Okay, I s'pose, but not enough control over the plane for my taste. Another slightly peculiar use of the gun.

BARGAIN BASEMENT

Another delve into the recesses of Speccy softstuff with Dr Marcus "stand very still and try not to scream" Berkmann.

Mastertronic
£1.99
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann

Another game to be played with Mastertronic's exciting new Magnum Lightphaser (I wonder how much that costs - more than £2.99, no doubt...). But strip away the gripping new technological requirements, and underneath it's just another aircraft combat game, with few differences, if any, from nine billion similar games we've seen in the past. True, your F-16 does beetle over four different scenarios - Sahara, Tropical, Arctic and Ocean - but, graphical backgrounds aside, there's not as much variety to it as there initially seems. What there is is immense speed - your react ions need to be incredibly fast and it's really dead easy to get killed. Quite what difference the Magnum Lightphaser™ makes I can't tell you, but with joystick or keyboard it's very much business-as-usual. Shoot them down before they shoot you, and all will be well.

THE COMPLETE YS GUIDE TO FLIGHT SIMS

Oh cripes. Whose idea was this? Couldn't we do it on something else? Nah, we promised. How about putting if off for another month? Or we could make JONATHAN DAVIS do it? Heh heh. Right, where's he got to? Ah ha!

Neeeeeow! Dakka dakka dakka! Kaboom! "Crikey, Ginger, pull up! Over."

"I can't! I think my flaps have gone a bit funny. Over." Neeeow! Boom!

"Bail out! Bail out! Over." Dakka dakka dakka. (Ricochet noises.)

"Er, okay then. Over and out."

Sorry about that, just trying to inject a bit of excitement into this thing because, let's face it, flight sims aren't exactly the most exciting bits of software around.

Or are they?

No, They're not. But there are loads of them about, and people keep buying them. Why is this? Perhaps we'd better investigate.

For thousands of years man has dreamt of flight... (Cut the crap, Ed) Erm, well, perhaps it's because they demand a bit more thought than your average arcade game. Fast reactions are all very well, but what about using your noddle occasionally? Keeping a plane in flight isn't just a matter of wobbling your joystick about a bit, which is the impression that lesser games give. You've got angles of attack to worry about, altitude, navigation, weapons systems, undercarriage... the list is endless. As are the manuals usually. And that's another thing. If you've never played one before you'll need to spend hours wading through one of these breeze-block tomes before you can even get off the ground.

Once you've got the thing up in the air though you're well away. With any luck there'll be lots of scenery to look at and plenty of enemy thingies to 'take out'. You might even like to indulge in a bit of aerobatics to pass the time. The one thing you should always keep an eye on though is the ground. Stay away from this at all costs. Unless you're landing, of course, which is another story altogether.

SO WHAT'S A FLIGHT SIM THEN, EH?

In compiling this guide I was faced with the usual problem - what exactly is a flight simulation? What are the criteria? Where do you draw the line? I decided to seek the advice of one of Europe's leading experts in the field of computer games.

"Er, Matt? (Cough.) Matt?' I ventured.

"Mmm?"

"Would you have said that, say, Fighter Pilot was a flight sim? Huh? Matt?" I enquired cheerily.

"Er, probably," he replied.

"How about Harrier Attack?"

"I expect it is, yes."

"Or Night Raider?"

"Um, look, I've got to go out. To the, er, shops. I'll see you later. Maybe."

Unperturbed. I decided to try Andy, but he didn't appear to hear me. I also tried ringing up a few friends. They all seemed to be out.

So it's all down to me then. Well, I reckon that really, in a flight sim, you ought to be in control of a plane of some sort. Ideally you'd get a 3D view out of the cockpit, but I'll be flexible and allow ones where you see the plane on the screen from the back (like ATF) and even ones where you see the view in 2D (from the top or something).

Another important guideline is the number of keys. Preferably there should be at least 2,452 of them, each with about three different functions. But, again, I'll allow a generous margin of error and set the bottom line at six.

And finally there's the manual. Obviously this should be as large and impenetrable as possible, with lots of incomprehensible acronyms that you have to keep looking up in the glossary at the back. A rough guide to length? Let's say 500-600 pages for a decent one or, if the game comes in an ordinary cassette box, an inlay card that folds out into a thin strip long enough to wrap round Matt's tummy at least two and a half times.

So now we know just what makes up a flight sim, let's take a look at a few…

RATINGS

Once again, the normally-so-versatile YS rating system doesn't really seem too appropriate here (Instant appeal? Addictiveness?). So what we've done is to come up with a revised system, specially tailored to meet the needs of today's flight sim. Let's have a nosey...

The View: Can you see anything nice out of the window? Or is it all just green and blue wiggly lines? And does the scenery glide around smoothly or jerk around like an Allegro with a dodgy clutch?

Realism: This can often be determined by the number of keys the game uses. So that's just what we've done. Counted 'em. As there are 40 keys on your basic Speccy, and each one can be doubled or even tripled up, the maximum comes out to exactly 100. Handy, eh?

Dakka Factor: Is there much to shoot? Or is it all a matter of map-reading, gauge-watching and other such nonsense? And once you've shot whatever it is, does it explode dramatically and plummet to the ground leaving a trail of smoke behind it? Or not?

Net Weight: A crucial part of any flight sim is all the junk that comes with it. So, adding together all the disks, maps, manuals, stickers and the box, what do the YS scales make of it? (All weights are, of course, approximate.) (In degrees.)

THE CHEAPO SIDE OF THINGS

You've got to give them credit - the budget people'll have a crack at anything. And flight sims are no exception. A full-pricey can take anything up to 18 months and a massive team of highly-trained programmers to develop, so what does your average beer-swilling cheapo programmer manage to come up with in the two weeks (evenings only) he's allotted? Let's brace ourselves and take a look.

F-16 Fighting Falcon
Mastertronic

A couple of major questions hang over this one. Firstly, why has it got a picture of a Harrier (with an extra tail fin) on the loading screen? And, secondly, why bother releasing it at all? (It's a bit crap.) The second question is easy enough to answer. It originally came out with the highly successful (?) Magnum lightgun, and obviously appeared to have some mileage left in it. Flight sim-wise, things don't look too hot either. It's a blatant Afterburner rip-off (but without the rocking landscape) and as Afterburner wasn't a flight sim this isn't either. Oops.

Label: Mastertronic Plus
Price: £2.99
Reviewer: Jim Douglas

I do love a game with completely illogical controls. Look, I know that Falcon Patrol doesn't bill itself as a realistic simulation. I realise that it's supposed to be a knockabout bit of blasting fun, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the controls to be the right way round.

When you fly a plane, pulling back on the joystick pulls the nose up (you go up). Pushing forward on the joystick tips the nose forward (you go down). And the same is true of a thousands of coin-ops and conversions the world over. Alas, F16 doesn't follow such dreary conventions. Your plane behaves as if it was an airborne cursor. Pulling back on the joystick to climb sends you earthward while pushing forward to dip your nose out of trouble cause you to climb into oncoming bullets.

You can't even remedy the situation yourself since there's no option to redefine the keys.

Although billed heavily as being compatible with the Magnum Lightphaser, the extent of Lightgun controls is minimal. You shoot your plane and the computer picks a safe direction and automatically moves you that way. So apart from the fact that it's completely unplayable, what's it like? Crap, I'm afraid.

Remember Afterburner? Well, take all the good bits and F16 is what you've got. Each of the four (count 'em!) stages takes place in a distinct global environment. There's the blistering heat of the Sahara desert, the close humidity of the tropics, the icy wastes of the Arctic and finally the, er, damp wetness of the Ocean.

Unfortunately, it doesn't really matter where you're fighting, since the baddies you face (enemy jets and choppers) are common to all levels.

Did I mention that it was extremely easy? Oh, it's appallingly easy. You can get through the level simply by letting go of the joystick and firing occasionally.

If you're bonkers about flying then maybe you could just about justify the three quid. Other than that. You'd be bonkers.

Author: Pete Williamson (even more busy!)

Four levels of 3-D flight combat. To defend your Falcon against the Soviet MiGs and 'copters, point the light gun at enemy targets and let rip with a barrage of heatseakers, sidewinders and heaps of other missiles to blast everything outta the sky! To avoid oncoming planes and their missiles, shoot(!) your plane to take evasive action.