F-15 Strike Eagle 2 MPS Labs
F-15 Strike Eagle 2 is a 16 bit combat flight simulator released by MPS Labs of MicroProse for IBM PC MS-DOS and Amiga in 1989.
F-15 Strike Eagle 2 was designed and programmed by Sid Meier and Andy Hollis.
The Original F-15 Strike Eagle
The original F-15 Strike Eagle was released on 48 kbytes Atari 8 bit 400/800 by MicroProse in 1984. It was coded by Sid Meier.
The IBM PC version of F-15 Strike Eagle was coded by Randall Don Masteller. Running in 4-color CGA 320x200 display mode the IBM PC Booter version of 1985 required an i808x and 128 kbytes RAM:
It could also be run in 16-color EGA 320x200 with 640x400 menu-screens:
As you can see, though, very, very basic menus. And wireframe objects and actors.
F-15 Strike Eagle 2
In F-15 Strike Eagle 2 of 1989 the player pilots the McDonnell Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle.
There are two scenarios added onto those in F-19 Stealth Fighter:
- Libya
- The Persian Gulf
- Vietnam
- The Middle East
- The North Cape
- Central Europe
F-15 Strike Eagle 2 is a simplified version of F-19. For example, you cannot choose your armaments. Another difference is that F-19 is about stealth tactics whereas F-15 is more about action and dogfighting.
F-15 Strike Eagle 2 Armaments
- M61A1 20mm Vulcan (six-barrel gatling gun-style cannon)
- AIM-9M Sidewinder
- AIM-120A AMRAAM
- AGM-65D Maverick air-to-ground missile
F-15 Strike Eagle 2 Combat Maneuvers
- Turning Inside
- Scissors Turn
- Immelmann Turn
- Split-S Turn
- Yo-Yo Turn
The above screencaps show the Amiga version.
F-15 Strike Eagle 2 IBM PC MS-DOS 1989
The IBM PC MS-DOS 2.1 version of F-19 Stealth Fighter requires an i808x or i80x86 CPU and 384K of RAM. The MS-DOS version supports 256-color VGA 320x200 graphics (640x400 titlescreen).
However, the VGA dithering technique shows that it does not take full advantage of VGA's palette range: the in-cockpit views look no better than 16-color Falcon 1988 or EGA. However, the land-and-sky color gradients constitute a notable graphical improvement over Falcon and the Amiga version of F-15.
In fact, F-15 is the first flight sim to employ land-and-sky color gradients. Viewport graduated detail can be increased and decreased via Alt-D.
Of course, on i80386es the MS-DOS version's framerate is much smoother than the Amiga version's framerate; thus, the MS-DOS version is the best version to play.
F-15 Strike Eagle 2 was distributed on 1x 3.5" 720kB DS DD diskettes or 2x 5.25" 360kB DS DD floppy disks.
F-15 Strike Eagle 3 IBM PC MS-DOS 1992
F-15 Strike Eagle 3 was released by MPS Labs of MicroProse in December of 1992 for IBM PC MS-DOS 5.0. F-15 Strike Eagle 3 requires an i80386 clocked at 16 MHz, 588K of free conventional RAM and 752K of EMS RAM.
F-15 Strike Eagle 2 displays in 256-color VGA 320x200. Note the hill density but also the chunky 3D graphics. Note also the cinematization of the presentation: in comparison to some other flight sims of the early 90s, less info is given per screen as a result.
Via drop-down menu graphics detail can be tailored on-the-fly: Mountain and Fighter have three levels of detail (high, medium, low) and Object, Ground, Explosion and Sky have two levels of detail (high, low).
F-15 Strike Eagle 3 was designed by Andy Hollis, Jim Day, George Wargo and Chris Clark; it was coded by Andy Hollis, Scott Spanburg, Bill Becker, Don Goddard, Ned Way and David McKibbin.
F-15 Strike Eagle 3 was distributed on 5x 3.5" 1.44MB HD diskettes or 6x 5.25" 1.2MB DS HD floppy disks.
F-15 Strike Eagle manual written by Paul Fudiccia & Ed Bever: 44 pages.
F-15 Strike Eagle 2 manual written by Jeff Briggs: 97 pages.
F-15 Strike Eagle 3 manual written by Jim Day & Lawrence Russell: 208 pages.
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