What have you played in the weekend?

Oh man, those are my first ever Let’s Play videos. Thanks for watching, but man those were rough.

How do those Journeyman Project games play? I understand they are adventure games. I am terrible at the genre (I even dislike Lucasarts games, because they are just pile of frustration where I have to look up anything to advance), but I enjoy very lite ones (like the first Syberia, or the recent Contradiction).

I played F-19 on the Atari ST back in the day. Definitely a great game and a true classic even if the modeled aircraft never really existed and was nothing like the real world F-117.

What sticks out in my recollections is the tension when opening the weapons bay caused radar cross section to jump upwards.

I don’t recall any issues with joystick control.

In the remake, F-117 Stealth Fighter 2.0, they included a “real” F-117 mode, and you traded off air-air capacities and two weapons slots for… well, basically God Mode, as barely anything was ever capable of sniffing you. I like Microprose’s F-19 way better!
F-19’s smoke effects on explosions are quite glorious, too.

I’ve been playing a fair bit of Space Tyrant.

I’ve won the last few missions by cheesing things a little. Actually reading the victory conditions - e.g. play 5 cards in the same turn to win the scenario - and aiming towards those instead of trying to conquer everything.

If i ever become wealthy, I’ll also be doing a Flight Sim Junkie just to revisit games like these.

In the end, I was bit by the Grim Dawn bug and took my Arcanist from level 20 to level 40.

The game is awesome. Really awesome.

Thank you, I added it to my watchlist and I will see if those esthetics speak to me or not then!

I never played F-19 - not because I didn’t want to but because I could never get hold of it as a youngster. I used to stare at the adverts longingly. The kid in me wants to pick it up, the adult in me fears it will be too badly aged to get any fun out of (and a childhood ideal will be revealed to have feet of clay). Opinions welcome!

I think if you approach it knowing it’s a very 1987 game from a UI perspective, you’ll be fine. It’s gameplay still, to me at least, as engaging now as it was then.

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Thanks. At 6 EUR not too much to lose! And the F-117 @Left_Empty mentioned? Worth getting as well?

Don’t look at me like that, it’s my own thing, not like your classic Flight Sim Follies.

Meh, it’s good, but not as fun as F-19, in my opinion.

ANCIENT SIMS WORTH GETTING

Anything by Dynamix. Unfortunately, only Red Baron is commercially available. Aces Over the Pacific and Aces Over Europe, along with A-10 Tank Killer 1.5 are out there and easily found (especially if you know the right people).

Gunship 2000, F-117 Stealth Fighter 2.0, PAW: 1942, F:14 Fleet Defender are all Microprose sims and commercially available. European Air War, the best Microprose sim, isn’t.

EF: 2000 and Total Air War are benchmark sims by DiD.

And if you’re still into big-ass pixels then you can get Falcon 3 (Gold) for a song over at GoG.

These will keep you busy for over a decade.

Hey, if you’re gonna steal, steal from the best, like I did from Gordon with the Follies ;)

I’d also add anything by Digital Integration, like Tornado, Apache and Hind, to Scharmers’ fantastic list.

This. And DI’s (as Razorback) swan songs of Apache/Havoc & Commanche/Hokum.

All are available at GoG except Tornado. Some poor yot out there actually got a hold of Tornado’s source code, but didn’t know how to code. All the calls he put out for help went unheard, sadly.

You know, I should probably post this: http://www.migman.com/

I’m still disgustingly sad about this.

Thirdwire’s Strike Fighters series is still available. I really liked it, since no other sims allow you to see fighter aircraft evolution as clearly. It’s also a good compromise between sim/“arcade”, and pretty fun to play.

That said, it’s no longer supported AFAIK, and it’s somewhat expensive. Still worth playing in my book. I have them all.

https://store.thirdwire.com/mygames.php

EDIT: I’m getting SSL errors at the store. Trying to find out what’s going on, but it’s possible that the games are no longer sold. :(

As a newbie who has played both games for the first time this past month, I share @BrianRubin’s opinion: you need to not care at all about graphics as a prerequisite (I am lucky on that front) and while F-117 looks midly better, besides that, I think that F-19 is better fleshed out in its details.
Also, to get a bit technical, F-117 needs to be played at a very low cycles count in DOSBox to be accurate (the same count, around 3500, as F-19), which results in a much lower framerate than the older F-19 over populated areas! If you want smooth frames in F-117, the AI will simply practically stop working, taking out the suspense aspect of the game which gives life to it.
Anyway, F-19 is a fine game, but it relies on an older concept to keep you playing: the chase for score. There is no dynamic campaign like in the title @scharmers recommended, nor a story based ones. I spent about 6 hours playing over a dozen of missions in F-19, and I see me playing a little more (chasing those medals!), but not much more.
Microprose’s Knights of the Sky had a similar score chase elements, but the campaign also features a progression in time which made it more absorbing than F-19/F-117’s. I really like Knights of the Sky a lot, for all its faults ;)

Thirdwire’s forum is gone as well, not even linked any more. I can imagine that TK has finally, after long last, washed his hands of the PC sim world, and is focusing strictly on his mobile titles.

If this is the case, then there might be people out there who know where you can get it if you really want it.