Battlehawks 1942
1988 games Amiga gamesAtari ST games
Flight simulator which puts you in the cockpit of World War 2 airplane over Pacific either as US Navy pilot or the Japanese Navy.
Battlehawks 1942 is one of the shining examples why Lucasfilm Games were so highly regarded in the 1980s and 1990s - we have here a flight simulator that was praised for historical accuracy and offered a chance to play on both sides of the conflict. There was no clear reason to simulate the Japanese airplanes as well, but the fact that they added this feature, made the game so much more interesting. Not only you can learn the reality of the conflict from both sides, but also see how different their equipment was.
They put four most important battles of World War 2 on Pacific (Battle of the Coral Sea, Battle of Midway, Battle of the Eastern Solomons, Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands) where the aircraft carriers played an important part, you can play on both sides and in 3 different types of planes (fighters, dive bombers and torpedo bombers), so basically you have 24 different scenarios to play, in a game from 1988.
Of course, with historical accuracy and simulation came also the burden of difficulty and, oh boy, was Battlehawks 1942 sometimes difficult. The dogfights were challenging because of the sprite limitations (when the target changes the course by few degrees the sprite shows much higher angle), dropping torpedoes was challenging because it was hard to tell the height and distance, dive bombers were relatively easier to use.
The game was successful enough to be followed by two "sequels": Their Finest Hour in 1989 (Battle of Britain) and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe in 1991 (US Air Force against Luftwaffe over Europe).
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