Reach For the Skies was a battle of Britain based flight simulator done by Virgin games/Rowan software released in 1993. It is a flight simulator flown from the cockpit and allows you to play as either the British or the Germans.
The game has various options on top of the sides to chose to play as also allowing a command game where you can decide what targets to attack as the Germans or what response to send to intercept incoming hostile aircraft as the British, you can also play as a pilot if you prefer just to fly and fight without having to worry about the command side of things.
The game allows a total of five different aircraft to fly the British have the spitfire and hurricane while the Germans have the Messerschmitt Me109 and Me110 plus the Ju87 Stuka. These aircraft are all fully controllable the last two even allowing you pilot the aircraft or just act as the rear gunner. The Stuka playing as the pilot even allows you to dive bomb targets. The three German medium bombers the Heinkel He111, Dornier Do17 and Junkers Ju88. Although you cannot fly or bomb targets with these (they are non-flyable aircraft) you can operate in any gunner’s positions of these to defend them from the attacking aircraft.
The game’s time period is split up into four options covering the whole Battle of Britain,
these are the Convoys, where the coastal shipping in the English Channel must be defended from attack by the British player or sunk by the German player. Next is the Eagle attack, where as the Germans you are to attack RADAR stations and any other targets that are needed to soften up for the next phase as the RAF you must defend against these as with all the time period options, its quite simple for the RAF to play just shoot down the German aircraft and defend whatever they are attacking. The next phase is the Airfields where as the Germans you attack airfields to try to put them (and the RAF) out of action leaving them unable to defend the country. The final phase is the Blitz where the Germans can select to bomb industrial targets in the cities.
The game is a bit basic when compared to the modern sims of this nature and has a limited number of aircraft in the sky at one time depending on what phase it is played in (RAF can have up to 8 fighters during the blitz to fly at any one time while the Germans can have a few more) For their time the graphics aren’t too bad although no massive level of detail and a few things look a bit blocky the aircraft all look the right shape and objects on the ground like radar towers, gasworks and ships do at least look like what they are supposed to be representing. The game has the option for varying levels of difficulty such as damage or no damage to your own aircraft and limited or unlimited ammunition.
Overall, reasonably good graphics, good gameplay and quite a well presented game not as good as what is out nowadays, but for its time well worth a play, if you are into WW2 flight simulators.
