Chuck Yeager's Air Combat is a 1991

1991 in video gaming

-Notable releases:*Microprose creates Civilization, Sid Meier's most successful game .*Electronic Arts releases James Pond 2 and Road Rash for Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, starting a series of games that were popular in the 1990s....

 computer aircraft simulation

Flight simulator

A flight simulator is a device that artificially re-creates aircraft flight and various aspects of the flight environment. This includes the equations that govern how aircraft fly, how they react to applications of their controls and other aircraft systems, and how they react to the external...

 game produced by Electronic Arts

Electronic Arts

Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...

. Famed pilot Chuck Yeager

Chuck Yeager

Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager is a retired major general in the United States Air Force and noted test pilot. He was the first pilot to travel faster than sound...

 was a technical consultant in the game and his digitized voice is featured in the game, giving encouragement and praise before and after missions.

The game is characterized for its good balance of an action laden gameplay which focuses on classical dog fights and a simple but still realistic flight model which justifies calling Chuck Yeager's Air Combat a simulation. Unlike in many other flight simulation games of its day, altitude

Altitude

Altitude or height is defined based on the context in which it is used . As a general definition, altitude is a distance measurement, usually in the vertical or "up" direction, between a reference datum and a point or object. The reference datum also often varies according to the context...

 and aircraft characteristics have a big influence on the behaviour of the game's simulated aircraft. Realism has been sacrificed to some degree to enhance gameplay however: E.g. a real fighter plane expends all of its ammunition after a few short bursts, while in Chuck Yeager's Air Combat the rate of fire has been reduced considerably, making dog fights longer.

To assist a newcomer to the game several help features can be activated, such as unlimited ammunition or easier aiming. A virtual Chuck Yeager can be activated, who gives advice.

In the introduction sequence a copy-protection measure consists of one trivia question about a featured plane. The answers are in the appendix pages of the game manual.

Available for the DOS

DOS

DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...

 and Apple Macintosh, the latter version is considered superior as its graphical display is at a much higher resolution, multi-player network play is supported and saved movies may be exported in QuickTime

QuickTime

QuickTime is an extensible proprietary multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. The classic version of QuickTime is available for Windows XP and later, as well as Mac OS X Leopard and...

 format. In addition, after the copy-protection question has been answered correctly one time the game may then be started without answering any questions for as long as it resides in the same folder.

Aircraft

The game featured six player-flyable aircraft: P-51D Mustang

P-51 Mustang

The North American Aviation P-51 Mustang was an American long-range, single-seat fighter and fighter-bomber used during World War II, the Korean War and in several other conflicts...

, F-86E Sabre

F-86 Sabre

The North American F-86 Sabre was a transonic jet fighter aircraft. Produced by North American Aviation, the Sabre is best known as America's first swept wing fighter which could counter the similarly-winged Soviet MiG-15 in high speed dogfights over the skies of the Korean War...

, F-4E Phantom II

F-4 Phantom II

The McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II is a tandem two-seat, twin-engined, all-weather, long-range supersonic jet interceptor fighter/fighter-bomber originally developed for the United States Navy by McDonnell Aircraft. It first entered service in 1960 with the U.S. Navy. Proving highly adaptable,...

, Fw.190A-8

Focke-Wulf Fw 190

The Focke-Wulf Fw 190 Würger was a German Second World War single-seat, single-engine fighter aircraft designed by Kurt Tank in the late 1930s. Powered by a radial engine, the 190 had ample power and was able to lift larger loads than its well-known counterpart, the Messerschmitt Bf 109...

, the Soviet MiG-15 'Fagot'

Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15

The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 was a jet fighter developed for the USSR by Artem Mikoyan and Mikhail Gurevich. The MiG-15 was one of the first successful swept-wing jet fighters, and it achieved fame in the skies over Korea, where early in the war, it outclassed all straight-winged enemy fighters in...

 and MiG-21MF 'Fishbed'

Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21

The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 is a supersonic jet fighter aircraft, designed by the Mikoyan-Gurevich Design Bureau in the Soviet Union. It was popularly nicknamed "balalaika", from the aircraft's planform-view resemblance to the Russian stringed musical instrument or ołówek by Polish pilots due to...

. Other featured AI-driven aircraft were: Me.109E

Messerschmitt Bf 109

The Messerschmitt Bf 109, often called Me 109, was a German World War II fighter aircraft designed by Willy Messerschmitt and Robert Lusser during the early to mid 1930s...

, Me.110B

Messerschmitt Bf 110

The Messerschmitt Bf 110, often called Me 110, was a twin-engine heavy fighter in the service of the Luftwaffe during World War II. Hermann Göring was a proponent of the Bf 110, and nicknamed it his Eisenseiten...

, Me-163B Komet

Messerschmitt Me 163

The Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet, designed by Alexander Lippisch, was a German rocket-powered fighter aircraft. It is the only rocket-powered fighter aircraft ever to have been operational. Its design was revolutionary, and the Me 163 was capable of performance unrivaled at the time. Messerschmitt...

, Me-262 Schwalbe

Messerschmitt Me 262

The Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe was the world's first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft. Design work started before World War II began, but engine problems prevented the aircraft from attaining operational status with the Luftwaffe until mid-1944...

, P-47D Thunderbolt

P-47 Thunderbolt

Republic Aviation's P-47 Thunderbolt, also known as the "Jug", was the largest, heaviest, and most expensive fighter aircraft in history to be powered by a single reciprocating engine. It was heavily armed with eight .50-caliber machine guns, four per wing. When fully loaded, the P-47 weighed up to...

, Yak-9

Yakovlev Yak-9

The Yakovlev Yak-9 was a single-engine fighter aircraft used by the Soviet Union in World War II and after. Fundamentally a lighter development of the Yak-7 with the same armament, it arrived at the front at the end of 1942. The Yak-9 had a lowered rear fuselage decking and all-around vision canopy...

, MiG-17MF 'Fresco'

Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17

The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17 is a high-subsonic fighter aircraft produced in the USSR from 1952 and operated by numerous air forces in many variants. Most MiG-17 variants cannot carry air-to-air missiles, but shot down many aircraft with its cannons...

 and F-105D Thunderchief

F-105 Thunderchief

The Republic F-105 Thunderchief, was a supersonic fighter-bomber used by the United States Air Force. The Mach 2 capable F-105 conducted the majority of strike bombing missions during the early years of the Vietnam War; it has the dubious distinction of being the only US aircraft to have been...

 as opposing fighters and B-17E, B-29C

B-29 Superfortress

The B-29 Superfortress is a four-engine propeller-driven heavy bomber designed by Boeing that was flown primarily by the United States Air Forces in late-World War II and through the Korean War. The B-29 was one of the largest aircraft to see service during World War II...

, B-52

B-52 Stratofortress

The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress is a long-range, subsonic, jet-powered strategic bomber operated by the United States Air Force since the 1950s. The B-52 was designed and built by Boeing, who have continued to provide maintainence and upgrades to the aircraft in service...

 and L-5 as aircraft to either protect or shoot down, depending on the mission.

Flying Modes

Three different fly modes were available: Free Flight, which put the user in a selected airplane in a non-hostile environment; Create a Mission, where the user could specify which airplane to pilot against a selected number of AI-driven aircraft of varying levels of difficulty; and Historical Flight, where user could select among three wars to fly in: World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, Korean

Korean War

The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...

, and Vietnam

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

.

Historical Missions

All missions are based upon actual missions ranging from strafing attacks of WWII, the open dogfights of modern air warfare, and the combat missions of Vietnam, which included bomber escorts. However, large, famous battles in the wars are not included (for example, there are no D-Day, Pearl Harbor, or Battle of Britain missions).

Campaigns

The Campaign mode of Chuck Yeager's Air Combat could be started by including the CAMPAIGN argument with the DOS command to start the game. In this mode, the player must successfully complete the missions in each war in order. Upon successful completion, a mission is marked with a small red box and the next mission then becomes available for selection and play. (In some versions, the first "page" of missions for a war is available for flying, allowing for the first three missions to be flown out of order.)

Campaign mode is quite a bit more difficult than completing Historical Missions individually. In order to successfully complete the missions, a player must land at his home base, which means that it may be necessary to destroy considerably more enemy aircraft than normal in order to ensure a safe return. Additionally, death resulting from being Killed in Action means that no more missions may be attempted on that file (the player must start a new file). Ejecting before being killed in action allows the player the possibility of attempting the mission again; however, if the ejection occurs over enemy territory there is a possibility of being captured, which then also prevents any other missions from being completed.