Anybody remember a unique flight/real time tactical simulation called Super-VGA Harrier? This game was light years ahead of its time. Basically, you were part of an MEU based around the USS Tarawa that was positioned off a the coast of a fictional Indonesian type Island involved in a civil war/coup. It was an East Timor style scenario with US military assets intervening to restore order. You could strap into an AV8B Harrier and play a direct role in the combat as a pilot, or you could play as the task force commander where you had access to infantry, amphibious, helo and strikecraft assets. You could create a whole battle plan for the invasion of the island. The game was just awesome, but I can't say I appreciated it as much back when it was released.

It was the first flight sim rendered in 640x480, and although not as exacting in fidelity as later sims, such as Tornado and Falcon, the flight mechanics were modestly accurate. What made this game so outstanding was the tactical command element and the ability to control an entire Marine Expeditionary Unit. It was such a blast watching infantry deploy from AAVs while tracking helo assault elements hitting their LZs under Cobra escort.

The only folks who will likely be familiar with this game are the older hardcore flight sim junkies like me...

I wish there was a modern equivelent of this game. With the power of modern processors a game like this would be a dream.

There was a sequel released called Flying Nightmares...it ws a closet hit on the mac system, but was never released on the PC and skipped to a 3DO console release which was needless to say, extremely dumbed down from the mac version. Flying Nightmares II was cancelled...shame.

Anyway, if you've played this one, then you know how great the concept was and how although not perfect, the execution was impressive for the time.

Hey, Grunt!
Yes I even tried it again last year, using dos box. Still runs - for me, a little tricky to control, but still engaging. The combined arms effort was indeed well done and interesting to try and orchestrate as well as dive into tactically. Nice move to bring this one up.

Another sequel was KA-50 Hokum which had the same concept but moved to the south China sea to hunt pirates with a KA-50, AH-1 Cobra and a Huey? Was quite fun as well, but I haven't succeeded in running it in Dosbox yet.

/C

It was a true classic. First time I have played it on Amiga 500, when I was maybe 12 or more years old, at that time didn't realized it was so complex. Revisited it on PC in around 2000 and was astonished how good the flight model was. Based on SVGA Harrier, Domark later relesad Flight Sim Toolkit which you could use to build your own sim! There were some non-commercial decent sims built on that (I remember Tornado and EF2000, don't confuse with Digital Integration and Digital Image Design work). To be honest I never finished the campaign, maybe becouse the lack of time (I was on the 1st year in college at that time, lot to study ).

It's me again . Check the little video I've made today using DosBox.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm3964ZSZmE&feature=channel_page

If you like it, please leave a comment. Be gentle, it's my first video ever! It's raw, no editing was made. Hope you enjoy it!

NICE!!!! Gotta love DOSBOX. I think the graphics are better than Falcon 3! I think I have this one archived somewhere.

Nice landing!

Thanks! The landing wasn't exactly superb, real Harrier pilots come from port/aft side, hover above the water then move sideways right to land, then descend on the deck. The computer pilots in this game land bit differently. They go straight from the aft and land behind the island, then dissapear (go into the hangar?).

The missions are pretty good, you can go SAM hunting with HARMs and acquiring them with help of your RWR. When special teams are deployed on land you are able to use laser guided weapons like GBU's and Mavericks, the guys on the ground will paint the targets for you. The Task Force is really big, and you can see ground forces are being deployed throughout the campaign. You are there just to support them, their task is to capture and occupy the land. From perspective this game was way ahead of its time.

Hey, any carrier landing of any type that doesn't result in a ball of flame is a good one in my book

I remember landing the Harrier and the YAK-141 on their carriers back in the Janes ATF/Marine Fighters/ATF GOLD series.. and it was always a white knuckle experience getting into a hover/short landing configuration at the right time... ditto the helo landings on Assault carriers in Gunship 2000/DI Apache/EECH.

Ah the good old times of flight simming. Still have Fighters Anthology in the big box. Gunship 2000 was my nr 1 helo sim till Jane's Longbow showed up. Still playing both of them occasionally. Memories...

edit: To me it seems like the whole Jane's USNF/ATF/FA series uses flight model from old Chuck Yeager's Air Combat (all of them Brent Iverson's creations) which is pretty unrealistic. Other than that the atmosphere in first USNF was excellent, great background music, one of my favorite in flight sims to date.

I think Gunship 2000 was my favorite Sim EVER. Gone back and tried to play it with DOSBOX, but never quite recaptured the magic (shorthand for I can hardly complete a single mission!!).

ATF/NATO FIGHTERS/ATF Gold was the first sim I ever did extensively in Multiplayer (via long distance modem connection with a fellow simmer in California) and then over the Internet when GOLD made it possible and, as such I have a soft spot for the series. I bought the various toolkits and messed around with the various REALISM library files created and I could forgive the flight models/simplified radar/weapons models in exchange for pure FUN.


I drew the line at USNF 97 and Fighters Anthology, feeling like I had bought the same game 5 times already (USNF+Marine Fighters, ATF+Nato Fighters+ATF GOLD) but a few years ago I did pick up a Fighters Anthology set for posterity, though I haven't even installed it.


Reading Ed Macy's "APACHE" now and will probably have the urge to jump into LONGBOW 2 again soon. If GS2000 was my favorite Single Player sim, I think LB2 has to be my favorite Multiplayer sim. (though Janes F/A-18 is a close second).

If you do try to install FA be sure to get 'fae102.exe' patch. With it you can run this on XP with no problem (It's main benefit is a frame limiter which slows down the action to normal speed on modern systems). The only strange thing was that the installer window took very long time to appear IIRC.



LOL, indeed. Some time ago I managed to finish all 4 campaigns in GS2000 with Island & Ice add-on scenarios - great fun.

All in all I think that if not for a little nostalgia action going on we would have never looked at most of these games now. But some of them really had something in them that at the time I hadn't noticed, and even today they retain some appeal to flight simmers. For me most of them will be classics which I will come back to from time to time, but have in mind that I started with F-19 Stealth Fighter and F/A-18 Interceptor on Amiga500 20 years ago. Whoa, was it really that long ago???

OK.. I tried to get SVGA Harrier running in DOSBOX 0.72 with mixed results.

Had sound in the intro animation but not in the game.

Fixed..thought the sound I get, esp. Engine sound is pretty terrible


The cursor in game was floating all over the place even after I ran the Calibration routine on my Stick/Throttle.

Fixed with TIMED=TRUE

Any other recommended settings for DOSBOX optimization?

Also be nice to find a manual....no joy at Replacementdocs

For sound problem make sure when you first run the game run LOWRES.BAT or HIRES.BAT depending on which resolution you want to have and then from now on you can run the game with the AV8B.BAT (with intro) or AV8BFLY.BAT (without intro). Those files before calling fly.bat they execute sndtsr.exe which enables sound card support in the game. If sndtsr.exe is not executed you will have PC Speaker emulation, which I think is the case. You also have to enable engine sound in the menu available under ESC key during flight what you already have figured out.

For my [joystick] section in dosbox.conf file:

joysticktype=auto
timed=false
autofire=false
swap34=true
buttonwrap=true

I also use fixed cycles at 20000.

I obtained the manual a while back from the homeoftheunderdogs site, unfortunately it has been closed down (not to legal issues). Recluse PM your e-mail to me and I will gladly send you a copy of the manual as well as my dosbox.conf file if you like