B-17 Flying Fortress: The Mighty 8th Page 5

By SimHQ on February 26, 2008 in _air11, hide

It Is What It Is

My final thoughts on B-17 Flying Fortress: The Mighty 8th for anyone wanting to give it a try.

Keep in mind this game is first and foremost a strategic bombing simulator featuring the B-17G. So if you’re looking for a fighter simulator with B-17s thrown in, you will want to look elsewhere. That definitely is not this sims strong suit. But as a strategic bombing simulator there is nothing else that even comes close years after it‘s release. Wayward Designs Ltd deserves credit for what they did get right and at least an understanding on what they didn‘t get right.

I was fortunate (or unfortunate) in the fact I grew up when home computers for gaming was in it’s infancy. First generation Commodore home PCs were very expensive and not common in most homes like PCs and video game consoles are today. So I spent many hour’s playing Avalon Hills classic military board game’s with my friends. One of Avalon Hills best game’s was a solitaire board game called B-17: Queen of the Sky’s. It was because of this game that I came away with a great appreciation of what MicroProse, Vektor Grafix and Wayward Design Ltd did with B-17: Flying Fortress and B-17 Flying Fortress: The Mighty 8th. All deserve credit if for nothing else but bringing this genre to the PC.

If Hasbro would have given them more time and support, who knows how much better this sim might have turned out. Maybe we would have even seen the multiplayer capability everyone anticipated. The player controlled fighter models could have arrived more refined rather then more like an after thought. How good either might have been if it was finished can only be speculated on as we will never know. In the end Wayward Design Ltd was out of options and most importantly, out of time. Regardless, it will probably be sometime (if ever) before we see another B-17 based sim. Publishers like MicroProse and developers like Wayward Design Ltd and so many other’s were casualties of a era when PC game developers and publishers were swallowed up, closed and resources moved to the development of console games.

Did Wayward Design deliver a solid B-17 simulator? If you include the patches, the OMF Editor and R&R file, my answer would be a resounding yes. I make this conclusion from my personal enjoyment and immersion with this sim.

So if your looking to for a very good WWII bomber simulator set in the European Theatre of Operations, that allows you to fly, fight and bomb the Third Reich there is only one sim that delivers… B-17 Flying Fortress: The Mighty 8th!

References

Listed below are several good reference sites and articles to further the story of the B-17 in World War II.

The Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum

Eighth Air Force Historical Society

The modern 8th Air Force

National Museum of the USAF

Purchase B-17 Flying Fortress: The Mighty 8th from GoGamer.com

B-17 photos, nose art, and personal stories

SimHQ Editor Jim Campisi’s ride in the Liberty Belle

The ATARI Support Page (downloads)

The ATARI Product Specific Issues Page

91st Bomb Group (Heavy) site

Wikipedia B-17 Flying Fortress Game Page

Sergeant Eugene Townsend’s B-17 Nose Art

The Bombs-Away web site

The 100th Bomb Group

B-17 Nose Art

Joel’s B-17 II Page