Solo Flight

1983 video games Atari gamesCommodore 64 gamesApple gamesPC games

flight simulators

One of the early flight simulators that did not involved the aerial combat elements.

Sid Meier became a legend through redefining genres, like he had with Civilization or Silent Service, and Solo Flight, in a way, was a similar case. It was not the first flight simulator he wrote for MicroProse, he made Hellcat Ace and Spitfire Ace a year earlier, but Solo Flight was a move into a new direction. While his previous games were aerial combat simulators, Solo Flight was about just flying. The basic mode of the game was as simple as that - take off and then land, whatever you do between those two events, is up to you. Not that there were a lot of activities to choose from, it was basically just flying. In the second mode of the game, there was an additional element - your aeroplane was transporting mail between airports. It does not sound exciting, because in fact it was not supposed to be exciting, it was all about that one activity, just flying.

Of course, since it was made for 8-bit computers, the simulation is very simplistic, but the idea was original - the screen was split into two halves, on the bottom one you could see the instruments, while in the top one a behind view on your aeroplane. Only the basic functions were available, but for 1983 it was all that was required - a simple game that, with some involvement of your imagination, gave you a bit of a feeling of flight. The game did not age well, as you can imagine, but it is still a solid piece of legacy left by Sid Meier from his MicroProse times.

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Solo Flight screenshots

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