Searching for an old WWII flight sim game

[Zeev]

Hi,

I was playing at mid 90's a WWII flight sim game where it covered a huge map of two Islands, one of them is if I am not mistaken was Great Britain.

You could fly famous planes such as Hurricane, Spitfire on the Allied side and various Axis planes from the Germany side.
At the end of each mission you was presented with static screen where your character got medals and a background picture of a situation suitable for your mission whether it was success or fail.

The graphics were very simple but I do remember that the controls were good and allowed me to fly in formation pretty easily for such an old game.
If some one remembers the name of this game I would be very grateful to get back and try to run it (hopefully it will run on Windows10).

[Uufflakke]

Aces over Europe perhaps?

 

Here is an overview of WWII combat simulaters since 1986:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_flight_simulation_game#World_War_II

[Zeev]

25 minutes ago, Uufflakke said:

Aces over Europe perhaps?

 

Here is an overview of WWII combat simulaters since 1986:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_flight_simulation_game#World_War_II

I think the graphics were a bit older and there were no vehicles.
Thanks for help anyway.

[Amiral_Crapaud]

I would venture the guess that the game you're looking for is Lucasart's Their Finest Hour

 

 

And I could still tell you by heart that the debrief screen for a successful RAF fighter mission would show a Spitfire with the code JC O M. That's how fondly I remember that game

 

[Arfsix]

     If "Their Finest Hour" is the game you ar looking for, it can be downloaded here:

https://www.myabandonware.com/game/their-finest-hour-the-battle-of-britain-sb

 

     I have no idea if the game will run on windows. The original was made for MS-DOS, so you are on your own! Good Luck! 

[343KKT_Kintaro]

On 5/23/2020 at 11:32 AM, Zeev said:

At the end of each mission you was presented with static screen where your character got medals and a background picture of a situation suitable for your mission whether it was success or fail.

 

 

Yep, most likely "Their Finest Hour"... and those medals you got probably correspond to the "Tours of Duty", which I do believe was the first carrier mode in the history of PC flight simulation.

 

 

[Monostripezebra]

On 8/30/2021 at 1:10 PM, 343KKT_Kintaro said:

 

 

Yep, most likely "Their Finest Hour"... and those medals you got probably correspond to the "Tours of Duty", which I do believe was the first carrier mode in the history of PC flight simulation.

 

 

 

Their Finest Hour did not have carriers... the predecessor "Battlehawks 1942" did. I loved those.

 

Another good one was EAW.. European Air War

[343KKT_Kintaro]

22 hours ago, Monostripezebra said:

 

Their Finest Hour did not have carriers

 

 

LoL, I typed "carrier mode" bu I meant "CAREER mode"... and the career mode was named "tours of duty" in the game... but maybe the game with the "tours of duty" was "Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe", so maybe not  "Their Finest Hour"...

 

[Guest deleted@83466]

Oh yeah, lots of memories of Their Finest Hour.  Type bob1940 to start! It stands out because it changed my preference in gaming to be primarily flight “sims”, in quotes because they were still just arcade.  Way influential game for me. Come to think about it, it was likely the first flight sim I had on the IBM, first one in color, as I previously had a very obsolete Apple II (with a monochrome monitor).  I remember it had the copy protection wheel, where the keywords were Debden, Detling, North Weald, Biggin Hill, etc, the RAF airfields.  I played it with the mouse to the point I wore out the ball.  The good times I had playing this, led me to get a joystick and the next sim I got after that was the original Red Baron.  And here we are.  I think the next big Lucasfilm game, which I recall had a very similar atmosphere to Their Finest, was the well known Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe.

Edited September 3, 2021 by SeaSerpent

[sevenless]

On 5/23/2020 at 12:33 PM, Zeev said:

I think the graphics were a bit older and there were no vehicles.
Thanks for help anyway.

 

Sounds like Their Finest Hour (1989 - 16 colours) or SWOTL (1992 - 256 colours). Both by Lucasarts and both excellent sims in the early/mid 90s.

 

Download Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe - My Abandonware

 

 

Download Their Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain - My Abandonware

 

[343KKT_Kintaro]

8 hours ago, SeaSerpent said:

flight “sims”, in quotes because they were still just arcade

 

 

I disagree with that. The difference between sims and arcades exists at least since the late 1980s. First person view and rudimentary physics are available in "Their Finest Hour" (1989), and these aspects of the game are those which exactly mark the willing of the developers... on the contrary "After Burner" (1987) is nothing but an arcade shooter (no simulated physics and clearly turned towards the use of external views only).

 

 

[Guest deleted@83466]

Ok, but 30 years later we have what would be “supercomputers” by 1980s standards, and in some of the simulations I’ve played in modern times, the best manual for the aircraft tends to be the real world POH or NATOPS.  So I don’t disagree that for the time, we could call them “flight simulators”, but if I played BoB or SWOTL today it would be an arcade joke.  Let’s not get sidetracked by semantics.   Their Finest Hour was a wonderful game, sim, or whatever you might want to call it.