You are looking for this cover art:
http://www.amazon.com/Falcon-4-0-Binder-PC-CD/dp/1558845682

And yes, that means Falcon 4.0 (Microprose) either the ring binder edition or the boxed copy edition.

Didn't the video "Art of the Kill" come with Falcon 3? If so then I need to find my disk.

Better late then never. Yesterday I've bought Falcon 4.0 on Polish auction site. Full boxed copy with Korea map, printed manual and big box. Now I wait for package.

I bought my first copy (CD Only) in some bargin bin of a majour supermarket chain in Durban, South Africa in 2000 on impulse. Boy was I shocked when I ran that puppy! With no manual, it was almost impossible to figure out what the heck was going on.

Since then, I have bought two full-boxed copies of Falcon (I lost the first copy in my move from SA to the UK) and also various copies of Allied Force over the years from various stores.

Long live the mighty Falcon (in ALL it's forms)!

I've got a couple of original copies of Falcon 4.0, one in a boxed set and another in a binder. The name is simply Falcon 4.0 and it was released by Microprose. Both the binder/manual and CD have the saying, "The New Benchmark in Flight Sim Technology".

Mike

I bought my copy at WM about 1999. It had everything in it including the huge spiral manual. I think I paid about forty bucks for it.

I think I was the first person in the US to buy a retail copy. I was omw to work in Manhattan and glanced in the EB I passed everyday and they had a pyramid of binders setup... remember when EB cared about PC titles LOL?

I bought it, got to work, posted a msg in the SimHQ forums and it became a front page news item. I tried to dig it up but the Dec 98 archives are not available.

Not much of a story to tell, as I just purchased a copy this November. I did acquire the Commanders Binder Edition though. Have owned AF since its' release. Looking forward to installing the BMS mod.
For those looking for a copy, E-bay has several listings. Spotted a 3.0 also.

I got the original binder edition shortly after release, and I still have it.

Trivia time. Microprose had a public beta team. Gabe Turk ran that effort. Right around the time version 1.04 was out, I made it onto the team and was with it until MP ceased support. If you take a look at BSU-49 and BSU-50 bombs, you'll notice that they've got parachutes, as they should. Earlier versions of F4 were missing the drag chutes for these bombs. I'm the one who caught that bug. At that time, my thing was air-defense suppression, and my favorite tactic was to silence a SAM site's tracking radar with a HARM, then execute a low-level CCIP strike with high-drag ordinance to neutralize the launchers and support vehicles. I loved to watch the bombs fall onto target with the target-cam, and it drove me bananas that the bombs had no parachutes. I was a total grognard back then, and I whinged at Gabe like crazy on the board til the dev team made the fix

Later on I discovered the Combined Effect Munition and learned more about how to execute CCRP strikes, and CCRP-dropped CEMs became my weapon-of-choice for the neutralization phase. I was a Jane's F-15 junkie before F4, and I *loved* the ability to auto-loft bombs onto an HRM-mapped target from standoff distance. I never really got that down in F4, but I got fairly good at precision level bombing via CCRP.

Haven't flown F4 since a couple months after Allied Force came out. I had a lot of fun with the AF Balkans campaign, though.

Miao, Cat

Kudos Cat on that story! Are you saying you haven't tried BMS yet? I would have to insist implore recommend that you try it as soon as possible! It really has become the sim we always wanted (save for terrain textures) and looks great. It's been a slow journey learning it again, but it will be worth it IMO.

WOW! Falcon 4.0 still alive and kicking! I wouldn't even know where to start to get back into it. I put probably a good 800 or more hours between Falcon 4 and Allied Force. I packed it up about four years ago though when we had kids. Now kids are getting a little older and broke out Wings of prey and getting me back into flight simmingn again. But I love the detail and dynamic campaign of Falcon.

In any case I still have two copies of Falcon 4 binder editions in shrink wrap. Have been using the spiral bound version until I got Allied Force.

What is the best rendition of Falcon 4 these days if I wanted to get back into it?

I feel his need a replty.... :P

I was playing Jane's F15 (The Pig) and Jane's WW2 Fighters when Falcon 4.0 hit the streets. If we can all remember at that time the Montster Voodoo2 was the "silkiest" card on the market. And the Janes games had it in the bag.

My friend brought me over the new Falcon 4.0 the week it was released. My first impressions of the sim were amazement. I remember the first time I heard all that crazy pilot chatter when I was leaving my base in Falcon 4.0. No other sim had it like that if any. I mean... for me I thought ''''wow this shiot is REAL!''''

Years after that first sim experience I heard "a real life Libyan vs. F14" engagement and it brought the same feeling to me.here is a link to it and the way i felt many nights flying on MultiVipers server.... http://www.military-heat.com/64/gulf-sidra-incident-1989

Great Great Great I cant say enough.....

I just pulled my old p4 out of the basement and loaded up Falcon AF

Good times... happy birthday

I purchased it 2 weeks after release,


RJ

I had pre-ordered the game at Software Plus in St. Louis (The only store I had found back then to carry all the obscure flightsim add on for Microsoft without having to order online). I was about a year into my first real job out of the Navy and college (played Strike Eagle III whenever I wasn't deployed on the Kitty Hawk).

I was working on the Harpoon / SLAM-ER program at MDC (Boeing) at the time and told my boss I needed the day off to play Falcon 4.0. he thought I was nuts, but just rolled his eyes. I remember staying up most of that night playing through campaign missions. Met a few others at work that loved the game as well and we've been friends ever since. One went on to build a F16 pit.....well, he's been building ten years I should say, doubt he will ever really finish

I remember that Gamespot had a Falcon 4 demo for grabs, i think it was 2 files of 50 megs.

Now your grinning and thinking ohhh thats like 2 minutes download time.. well back then i was stuck with Dialup, 33k6 to be exact.

Also i had to pay for every minute my phone was on the internet (adsl in 2000 was a god`sent).

One sunday i decided i was gonna fork over the cash and d/l the demo, i was meeting my parents at a aunt, and we spent most of the day there while my pc was chugging away trying to d/l the demo.

I came home expecting the download to be done, and to my horror, the d/l had timed out about 5 megs into the d/l, So i had to fork over i dunno, something like 150 bucks for nothing.


At the end of the month i bought one of the magazines since it had the demo on a disk (i miss that, getting your demo`s from magazines).


Not long after that the game came out and i rushed to a nearby gameshop to buy it, was awesome.

Wow, ok.

I purchased Falcon 3.0 sometime in 90 or 91. Then followed with the Mig and F18 expansions. Then i purchased TacFalc. Anyone remember that? It was Awsome! Then i played it for years till i recieved (after much urgeing and hint droping) F4 for christmas in 99 when it was released. Heady days those. On the Delphi forums discussing how to use everything. All the problems, Atari abondoning the sim when Gilman left, Erazor, leaked code....and here we are. I love it all, the latest update is amazing and a big Thanks to the BMS team.

(i wonder if i can dig up my old sig from frugals...)

Dan

Hi all..i was wondering what is tacfalc?
I also bought F4 at around 1999 in Multimedia shop in Zagreb,Croatia, , and was so impressed with it so i got hooked to the sim and stayed hooked for almost 13 years now...I shelved it some 2 months ago, beacuse i have a little baby to take care of, but after reading all this posts i started to get that familiar itching again...itch to fly....

I also remember on some weekends i went out with my friends, stayed till 2 a.m. and after 3-4 beers, went home and started flying and trying to sneak past those pesky walls of mig

I don't recall TacFalc, but I do remember StratFalc -- Strategic Falcon. I think it was from Flying Muffin.

I don't remember where I bought Falcon 4. It may have been off of Amazon. I think I pre-ordered it and had it the day it was released. Unfortunately, it crashed on my old AMD machine to the point where it was un-playable until the first patch. Still have the original binder and maps.
I rememer anticipating that game for a LONG time. The guys at work would raz me about it occasionally.

I think I was flying with the F-22 Pro and TQS. Soon added Bob Church's digital upgrade and started using digital Foxy at that time.

We soon had kids and I found I had no time for study sims anymore. The last thing I did was to use the openfilemapping object to export data to a monochrome LCD that I was driving with an 8051. I dabled in it now and then, but nothing compared to life BC. When Allied Force came out, I picked it up again and was able to spend some pretty good time with it. Now that my oldest is 13 and youngest is 10, I've been able to spend a lot more time with it again in the form of BMS.

Absolutely right Goblin it was StratFalc, just let me reach over here to my copy of falcon3 gold (that i purchased again with all three sims in a release years later) Im sure i still have the floppy in there....Ah here it is, Wow look at all that dust on top!

Strategic Falcon by Flying Muffin Enterprises (copy right 94 by Bill White)

Man i almost want to load all this stuff up

I really miss the squadron management aspect that Sratfalc provided. I changed the names of all my pilots and assigned flights by experience level. 4 ship flights got newbies to bring up thier stats and when you lost a pilot is was very upsetting and personal.

*Sigh*

Dan

I bought my first computer, a 286, from a buddy and it had Falcon 3.0 on it. No sound and a B&W screen. I fell in love with Falcon on the spot. Bought all the F3 add-ons.

I followed the Falcon 4 development from day one until the release. Bought it the second it came out, still have my original huge Falcon 4 binder manual. I don't fly F4 these days, maybe I'll get back into it if I can figure out what version to use. (I did buy the updated version but even that must have a dozen patches out by now.) On the plus side, my rig should get me about 1000FPS with F4.

I hear ya man! That game got me in trouble while I was getting my undergrad -- everything turned out o.k., but there for a while...Can you say obsession? Those were good times. But F3 was far from perfect. Remember how the flight model would change when your speed dropped below some low threshold? (Can't remember the exact speed now -- 180 kts?) I would get so frustrated when I'd make the commitment for a guns kill and spend my energy nose high, just to have the flight model change and my firing solution totally wiped out. Good times. Good times. I can still hear that bass in the UI music...