Still the games provided hours and hours of entertainment to would be fighter pilots, with compelling campaigns and missions F-14 Tomcat provided an platform for managing flight dynamics and developing situational awareness. It also enabled a new feature for DOS based flight sims that allowed the player to utilize wingman strategies. Targeting could be accomplished just as in the real Tomcat, Game play took on an extra dimension with this addition.
The manual was a bit intimidating, with numerous controls to learn and master, but with practice, anyone could manage a successful strike package or fleet defense mission.
The graphics of the game were much improved over similar offerings such as Microprose's vaunted F-15 Strike Eagle release.
Managing an environment to play these games often required running himem.sys in DOS to free up memory for such games. Sound cards had to be configured to exacting standards in order to get the appropriate sound and music settings. But the rewards of actually having the game run despite these steep requirements made all efforts well worth the extra trouble. Joystick enabling and initialization was a great deal more involved as interrupts and direct memory addressing was required to gain functionality, adding a more realistic sense to the games. Microprose continued to be the company to look to for entertaining and fun simulations. Other companies attempted
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to create the same types of games but never with the success of Microprose. Additional games centered on World War 2 scenarios and created a more generic appeal to consumers, but the small clique of dedicated die-hard fans often relied on Microprose to offer real-life, entertaining packages Unfortunately, not many software developers produce simulations for modern systems and platforms, and the simulation genre has generally faded into the past.
