When I was a young fella I absolutely loved this game. All you needed was a PC compatible joystick, some computer speakers and a bit of imagination and you were there in the cockpit. Graphics aside it was a very playable game and in my opinion years ahead of its time. Cheers for the memories
I listened to that droning B17 for hundreds of hours playing the campaign when I was 10. Still remember the raid on the Schweinfurt ball bearing plant always being hard to get through.
I spent hours and hours as a kid playing this, showed my dad who was visiting this video and he was like "Oh jeez not this again, I lost you to that damn game..it was good though." too true.
They should make a remake of this game. Keep the strategy and allow us to fly all the planes. Remember flying around like crazy and trying to shoot at everything I could. This truely is an amazing game.
Max out the graphics and the physics. Instead of 7 planes in your squad.. much larger deployments. Could even have multiplayer component.. each player has own B-17
The reason the pilot goes around to every gunner position is because , by default, each gun position starts on manual control. When he visits the gun position he turns on auto shoot. If he wants to he can take control and manually aim and fire any position, but they are turned on to auto so that at least they will return some fire if he can't attend to that gun.
@@sonicrefuge2509 sim part of modern sim is OK. But atmospehere is weak. I still remember old flightsims with their music, animated menus, lots of pictures inside. All you have now is game menu and background theme.
Memories, memories. I built hundreds of historically accurate missions with this game, using the book ‘The Mighty Eighth’ as a reference book for all the major missions flown by the 8th Air Force, from 1942 to 1945. They all had a historical balance of US to German planes, based on actual losses suffered by both sides. The flight waypoints, altitudes, and the map locations of where interceptions took place were as accurate as possible, so the player would basically experience pretty much what happened historically, where it happened. They all had long briefings giving the historical context for each mission. I wish I still had them, but sadly the floppy disks with them on were thrown away by mistake by my foster mother during a house move.
Wow I have been playing this game since it came out, and I never knew you could place your bombers so close to the target!!! I was always getting the luftwaffe to attack my bombers over England and would rarely ever make it to the target. Plus the escorts as well? Nice, I always tried to get the escorts to fly to the bombers as fast as possible and usually always lost.
I remember the SWOTL GROUP on Prodigy and sharing custom planes and files on BBS;s. And there was SWManager where you could change planes through a menu interface
In the box there is a frame where you can see the engines of a b17 in flames with debris but I always tried to see it but in game the engines are only in flames without any marks in the wings, I still having the original diskettes.
It was common practice to 'photoshop' the game screenshots in the early 90s. If you can find the original Wing Commander box you will see some stuff that definitely was not in the actual game!
WOW i still have this CD from back in the day I loved this game I played it on a week 486 x25 with 2 megs of ram I have tried to get the CD to run but I dont know how to with XP but its still in like NEW condition :)
ahh yes. the good old drone of the b 17. Thing could take a beating. If my plane got shot up really bad id fly all the way home and try to land it. This was a good game.
YEP !! :-) I did that too, all the oil plants, factories ... :-)) I really loved that game !! I sometimes landed a bomber near the oil reserves and shot them up with the guns on the bomber :-)
I did some test to find the right altitude with the right speed etc ... always perfect bombing :-) But then I found out that you better land the b17 near an oil plant and than shoot them from the turrets :-)
Yeah search out Richard Muth's page. He has good info on the game. I have had great results with dosbox. Run some training missions while fiddiling with the cycles/sec (ctrl-f12 / ctrl-f11). When the bombs act normal, you have found the correct rate.
B17 missions in the campaing were impossible...enemy keeps coming and coming and coming...endlessly...lol. And the secondary objectives could only be acomplished ifg you hit a ground target... Usually ended starting with a P47.. shooting some rockets to something and then going away :D.
Yup, looks like another regular mission over Germany. Those bombing missions were just too hard. I would operate the gunturrets manually and shoot down enemy fighters or even blowing them up. Then, when I had to focus on the bomb aiming, with the turrets on autofire, my plane would start taking serious hits in rapid succession. Many times I was able to drop the bombs right over the target but the second after bombs were released, I had to bail out and then I could see my bomber crashing down in flames while my bombs hit the target. And after landing safely with my parachute, me and my crew were probably rounded up and shot or lynched by angry mob.
not really, i think its a mish-mash of different old time patriotic music, though recognizable bits from over there do feature prominently. but if you want to split hairs, over there was more a WW1 thing, not 2.
@chamath1985 Interesting. The one Im talking about was developed my MicroProse around 2000 I think. Basically it allows you to manage every aspect of a B-17 crew. You can pick your targets to a limited extent and have your navigator set up your way-points. If you like WWII flight sims I definitely recommend it. I dont think there has ever been a game quite like it. The graphics hold up fairly well too for a game thats about a decade old.
This was a fantastic game/simulator. I really enjoyed. The handbook was really well done with nice historical facts. Great memories.
When I was a young fella I absolutely loved this game. All you needed was a PC compatible joystick, some computer speakers and a bit of imagination and you were there in the cockpit. Graphics aside it was a very playable game and in my opinion years ahead of its time. Cheers for the memories
I listened to that droning B17 for hundreds of hours playing the campaign when I was 10. Still remember the raid on the Schweinfurt ball bearing plant always being hard to get through.
I was 13 when i first played it in 1994.. Miss playing this game.
I spent hours and hours as a kid playing this, showed my dad who was visiting this video and he was like "Oh jeez not this again, I lost you to that damn game..it was good though." too true.
Urban Tactical Solutions lol
aaahahha same here lol.....
They should make a remake of this game. Keep the strategy and allow us to fly all the planes. Remember flying around like crazy and trying to shoot at everything I could. This truely is an amazing game.
Max out the graphics and the physics. Instead of 7 planes in your squad.. much larger deployments. Could even have multiplayer component.. each player has own B-17
The reason the pilot goes around to every gunner position is because , by default, each gun position starts on manual control. When he visits the gun position he turns on auto shoot. If he wants to he can take control and manually aim and fire any position, but they are turned on to auto so that at least they will return some fire if he can't attend to that gun.
Thanks for posting! Damn I played that a lot when I was a little kid! Loved it! What nostalgic feeling to see this video and hear the sounds again!
One of my all-time favorites!
Hey, thanks again for another installation of SWOTL exhibiton! Brought back many good memories of simpler days of MS-DOS ;)
This game was my childhood.
Should've cut in clips of the replay so we could seen whether or not the bombs hit.
Because of this game, I got alot of "C" in college. It was awesome. Great mix of strategy and flight sim.
got this game as well in 1992.
Such a great game. This is just how I remember it. Hours and hours and hours............
If only todays flight sims had the same kind of immersive gameplay like these classics did.
They do, you just grew up. :/
@@sonicrefuge2509 sim part of modern sim is OK. But atmospehere is weak.
I still remember old flightsims with their music, animated menus, lots of pictures inside.
All you have now is game menu and background theme.
I forget to mention the book with the handbook and historical references, I use to read it every night before to go to bed.
it was basically my smart phone on the toilet
Memories, memories.
I built hundreds of historically accurate missions with this game, using the book ‘The Mighty Eighth’ as a reference book for all the major missions flown by the 8th Air Force, from 1942 to 1945. They all had a historical balance of US to German planes, based on actual losses suffered by both sides. The flight waypoints, altitudes, and the map locations of where interceptions took place were as accurate as possible, so the player would basically experience pretty much what happened historically, where it happened. They all had long briefings giving the historical context for each mission.
I wish I still had them, but sadly the floppy disks with them on were thrown away by mistake by my foster mother during a house move.
Wow I have been playing this game since it came out, and I never knew you could place your bombers so close to the target!!! I was always getting the luftwaffe to attack my bombers over England and would rarely ever make it to the target. Plus the escorts as well? Nice, I always tried to get the escorts to fly to the bombers as fast as possible and usually always lost.
I remember the SWOTL GROUP on Prodigy and sharing custom planes and files on BBS;s. And there was SWManager where you could change planes through a menu interface
Wow I miss this game. Good times
Loved this game! Best game I ever played but looking back at those graphics 😐 A classic!
Played this 30 years ago and remembering this after watching Masters of the Air.
In the box there is a frame where you can see the engines of a b17 in flames with debris but I always tried to see it but in game the engines are only in flames without any marks in the wings, I still having the original diskettes.
It was common practice to 'photoshop' the game screenshots in the early 90s. If you can find the original Wing Commander box you will see some stuff that definitely was not in the actual game!
WOW i still have this CD from back in the day I loved this game I played it on a week 486 x25 with 2 megs of ram I have tried to get the CD to run but I dont know how to with XP but its still in like NEW condition :)
We had this when I was a kid but all I did was try to fly as high as I could
@Peter Alexander Drop nose to gain speed and control
Thanks for the memories!
This looks like it would have been amazing at the time
ahh yes. the good old drone of the b 17. Thing could take a beating. If my plane got shot up really bad id fly all the way home and try to land it. This was a good game.
I have tried some dos emulators but never got them to work
We need this on Gog.
Great game. The cheaty way of winning the campaign was to use fighter bombers to shoot up the refineries. :)
YEP !! :-) I did that too, all the oil plants, factories ... :-)) I really loved that game !!
I sometimes landed a bomber near the oil reserves and shot them up with the guns on the bomber :-)
God! I used to love playing this game but having seen it again in nearly 30 years!
I don't remember it looking this shit! Hahaha!
now THIS is gaming
Great game
I did some test to find the right altitude with the right speed etc ... always perfect bombing :-) But then I found out that you better land the b17 near an oil plant and than shoot them from the turrets :-)
I played this as a kid
It'd be great if they re-made this game!
Yeah search out Richard Muth's page. He has good info on the game. I have had great results with dosbox. Run some training missions while fiddiling with the cycles/sec (ctrl-f12 / ctrl-f11). When the bombs act normal, you have found the correct rate.
B17 missions in the campaing were impossible...enemy keeps coming and coming and coming...endlessly...lol. And the secondary objectives could only be acomplished ifg you hit a ground target...
Usually ended starting with a P47.. shooting some rockets to something and then going away :D.
Yup, looks like another regular mission over Germany.
Those bombing missions were just too hard.
I would operate the gunturrets manually and shoot down enemy fighters or even blowing them up.
Then, when I had to focus on the bomb aiming, with the turrets on autofire, my plane would start taking serious hits in rapid succession.
Many times I was able to drop the bombs right over the target but the second after bombs were released, I had to bail out and then I could see my bomber crashing down in flames while my bombs hit the target.
And after landing safely with my parachute, me and my crew were probably rounded up and shot or lynched by angry mob.
google for -The SWOTL Web Site Home Page -
take a look under secrets and hints, there´s a good tut for bombing runs, and other good tips.
this is cool!
funny, in my memory, the game had MUCH better graphics! but great to see it. I wish I still had my 386!!!
Gamechanger in flight simulation
So many hours invested in bombing oil fields😂
not really, i think its a mish-mash of different old time patriotic music, though recognizable bits from over there do feature prominently. but if you want to split hairs, over there was more a WW1 thing, not 2.
@chamath1985 B-17 the Mighty Eight? That's not a shooter game thats a full on flight simulator. That game is awesome.
@chamath1985 Interesting. The one Im talking about was developed my MicroProse around 2000 I think. Basically it allows you to manage every aspect of a B-17 crew. You can pick your targets to a limited extent and have your navigator set up your way-points. If you like WWII flight sims I definitely recommend it. I dont think there has ever been a game quite like it. The graphics hold up fairly well too for a game thats about a decade old.