Game Moments #2 - Falcon 4.0
Bryan Brown says he remembers this like it was yesterday. Me, not so much, so I hope I don't embellish too much. I get worried I may be combining two stories into one - but if I do get them mixed up, Bryan can step in and correct me.

The game was Falcon 4.0. This game was famous not only for its accuracy for simulating the F-16, but also for its bugs. It deserved the reputation on both counts --- though sometimes its adherance to reality was assumed to be a bug by people who were used much simpler flight simulators. Bryan Brown is a friend of mine who also worked at SingleTrac. We both shared a love for the really hyper-realistic modern air combat simulators. Unlike most fans of these kinds of games, however, what we enjoyed most wasn't duking it out in massive furballs (though those were fun too). Bryan and I liked to MOVE MUD. That is to say, causing all kinds of destruction to the things unlucky enough to be sitting on the ground.

In some sims, this was easy. ATF Gold (an earlier game that we also loved to play) would just have you magically lock onto a target, fly within launch parameters, and boom! Watch the guided missiles or smart bombs do their thing. You had to WORK FOR IT in Falcon 4.0. Our mission one afternoon had us blowing up a shipyard. It was the first day of the war, so it was pretty much insane air and ground activity across the board as North Korea began moving into South Korea. The shipyard was somewhere out on the southwestern part of North Korea. Bryan and I loaded up on iron bombs and had precious little space to spare for any air-to-air defenses.

I was flying lead, Bryan was my wingman. Bryan is pretty much the ultimate wingman. He was awesome to have in any flight sim (or in games like Rogue Spear) because he's cool, he's competent, and you know HE'S ALWAYS GOT YOUR BACK. Every time. Like it's a matter of honor for him. If you die before he dies, he takes it as a personal failure on his part. Even if you died because you were overconfident and stupid - which happens to me a lot. He actually preferred the role. We still swapped from time to time. But on this mission, I was flying lead. Bryan was flying behind me and to my right.

We weren't yet halfway to the target when we got bounced by MiG-21s. Not the most advanced aircraft in the sky, but they were nasty to tussel with in a close-range dogfight (a furball), and their missiles could kill you just as dead as the more modern versions. In our current condition - loaded for bear with bombs - we'd be incapable of taking them on in a real dogfight. We'd be forced to drop our weapons - conceding failure for the mission. Best to take them out at range.

We fired off our AIM-120's - I think we had two each. I don't remember if we killed anyone with those, but the enemy aircraft were forced to abandon their attack to evade our missiles. When all was said and done, there was ONE enemy plane left at close range. He engaged Bryan's plane. Bryan didn't want to drop his load yet, and the enemy plane hadn't quite gotten into a solid firing position. I was still loaded down like a pack-mule, too, but I went above and behind to try and help.

I saw the MiG right behind Bryan - he was at extremely close range, trying not to overshoot. Unlike the movie Top Gun, you don't hit the airbrakes to slow down in air combat. If you are in danger of overshooting, you typically pull your nose up on your turn - so you lose speed in the climb, but you gain an altitude advantage over your opponent. This maneuver is called a "high yo-yo." I expected this pilot to do the same thing, but my own range was pretty close - so I switched to guns and got ready to fire.

Sure enough, the pilot started pulling the high yo-yo and I shredded him with my guns. He exploded right in front of me into a thousand pieces of debris. I was too close, and flew right through the explosion, watching smoking chunks of the remains of his fighter fly by. Unfortunately, one of those chunks hit my aircraft, and my master alarm went off. The female voice in the cockpit (referred to as "Bitchin' Betty") repeated "Caution... Caution" as I checked my lights to see what was damaged.

The lights don't tell the whole story - they just report that a system was damaged, not the extent of the damage. If you see only one or two lights, it could be just superficial damage. Which is what I assessed. Everything was working, the smoke wasn't getting let out of my jet's engine, my HUD (Heads-Up Display) was still working - it looked like I was okay. So we continued the mission.

We met no more resistance on the way to the target. There was the shipyard, right in front of us. At the I.P. (Initial Point - where you begin your attack run), Bryan backed off and I switched to Air-to-Ground mode. The base was lightly defended, but the Anti-Aircraft guns could be nasty, so we needed to fly in as fast as possible and get back out again - just as fast. I lined up the target under my "Continuously Computed Impact Point" on the HUD (AKA the "Death Dot" - the point at which the in-flight computer calculates your bomb will hit), dove in for maximum accuracy, and LET THEM FLY!

Except they didn't. The bombs stayed right where they were. Apparently the "superficial" damage I took from the piece of MiG-21 debris flying through the explosion had knocked out my weapons release. Except for my guns, I was now unarmed. Unarmed but flying with several hundred pounds of now-useless weaponry under my wings.

I quickly told Bryan of my problem as I hit the afterburner and flew out. Bryan said, "Don't worry, I've got them." Trying to be helpful I loitered slightly overlong in the area to draw the fire from the guns on the ground as Bryan made his attack run. He rushed in, dove for the target, released his bombs, and immediately popped up to avoid being caught in the explosion from his own bombs.

BOOM! The shipyard went up, pieces of it flying over a thousand feet in the air. Mission successful. Now we just had to get home in one piece. Bryan had like one missile left - I had two wings full of useless weapons slowing me down. We didn't have enough fuel left to take the long way around (I'd decided - still properly, I believe - that the security of having extra fuel from a drop-tank was less important than the security of a couple of extra air-to-air missiles). Hopefully we could pass through the defensive screen of friendly fighters before the enemy jets which had no doubt been vectored our way reached us.

We almost made it. But we were bounced by more MiGs a few miles before we got to our protective screen. At this point, Bryan was now the Lead plane, and I was his wingman. We saw them incoming - Bryan and I would take turns turning to various angles to catch anything on radar. We pushed ahead as far and as fast as we could, but they eventually caught up to us. Bryan fired off his last missile to scatter the two planes and get them defensive. I was doing my best to support him, but I was still loaded with bombs and couldn't maneuver much. I was shot at, and had to drop chaff and flares and hope that he didn't get lucky. Bryan was all over the place - I was supposed to be covering him, but I couldn't keep up. Somehow, he maneuvered and once again the bandit that was attacking him was in my sites. He was too far for guns (and I was too slow to catch up to him), but I COULD get a missile lock on him.

Now, my missile wouldn't FIRE anymore because of the weapons jam. I knew that, but the little computer-controlled bandit didn't know that. He jinked hard and started dropping chaff and flares as I got the lock. By that point we were getting really close to our screen of friendly fighters, and I heard them call out over the radio that they had confirmed the enemy contacts.

Well, we were too close for the bandits' comfort at that point too, so they kicked in their burners and headed north, disengaging. We flew back to the base, and I managed to make a decent landing in spite of still having bombs slung on my wings.

Mission success, the debriefing told us.

No kidding. It was one of the best missions EVER!

Addendum: I should note here that I'm leaving lots of details out - not really adding any at all. This stuff (and much more) all really happened in the game. Falcon 4.0 had a ridiculously detailed, organic, dynamic world that puts even the most open-ended RPGs to shame. That was perhaps the bane of the game and the team - it was perhaps too big and detailed for its own good - thus the bugs. Some of us REALLY REALLY APPRECIATED that attention to detail, though.

Labels: Flight Sims, Game Moments, retro

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