''Megafortress'' (also known as ''Megafortress: Flight Of The Old Dog'') is a flight simulation video game developed by Artech Digital Entertainment and released by Three-Sixty Pacific Inc in 1991. The game takes place in the late 1980s and early 1990s and features three distinct sets of missions:

Red Flag (USAF) Exercise Red Flag (also Red Flag – Nellis) is a two-week advanced aerial combat training exercise held several times a year by the United States Air Force. It aims to offer realistic air-combat training for military pilots and other flight ...

training exercises at

Nellis Air Force Base Nellis Air Force Base ("Nellis" colloq.) is a United States Air Force installation in southern Nevada. Nellis hosts air combat exercises such as Exercise Red Flag and close air support exercises such as Green Flag-West flown in " Military ...

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a state in the Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the 7th-most extensive, ...

, a fictional series of missions during the First Gulf War, and a special mission which reenacts the plot of the novel ''

Flight of the Old Dog ''Flight of the Old Dog'' is a 1987 thriller novel written by Dale Brown. The novel's descriptions of B-52 controls and operations are based on Brown's knowledge of the systems as a USAF navigator. The flight is also recreated as a special mis ...

.''

Gameplay

The game is played as a 1st person flight simulator. The player can fly the EB-52 from six stations ranging from the pilot's station to the electronic warfare officer's station. A player earns a promotion from successfully completing a set of 5 missions. The highest rank that can be achieved in the game is brigadier general (35 missions). If the player completes the special mission known as

, they are immediately promoted to brigadier general. However, after the player completes 99 missions, they are automatically retired.

Release

The packaging illustration was done for Three Sixty Pacific by Bay area illustrator Marc Ericksen, who had previously created cover art on four battle sets of the ''V for Victory'' series, as well as their release of ''Das Boot''. Two add-ons were published, ''Megafortress: Operation Sledgehammer'' (1991) and ''Megafortress: Operation SkyMaster'' (1992).

Reception

'' Computer Gaming World'' in 1992 favorably reviewed the game's graphics, interface, and

sound card A sound card (also known as an audio card) is an internal expansion card that provides input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under the control of computer programs. The term ''sound card'' is also applied to external audio ...

audio, and recommended it to players "looking for a game with more emphasis on strategy and less seat-of-the-pants dogfighting". A survey that year of wargames with modern settings gave the game four and a half stars out of five. and the magazine named it one of the year's best simulation games. In a 1994 survey of wargames the magazine gave the title four stars out of five,

References

External links

* *{{cite magazine, url=http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue139/104_Megafortress.php, magazine=COMPUTE!, issue=139, date=April 1992, page =104, title=Megafortress computer game evaluation, author=Scott A. May, publisher=atarimagazines.com 1991 video games Amiga games DOS games Flight simulation video games Video games developed in Canada Military of the United States in fiction Artech Studios games Single-player video games