Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

ave you ever seen the simulator
rounds on The Krypton Factor? The bit
where Kenneth the systems analyst
from Ohelmsford has lo sit in a Boeing
simulator and attempt to land ii at Hong Kong
International. He sweats, gnashes his teeth and
grimaces until he's crashed into the Hilton
Hotel just to Ihe left, shrugs and hopes for
better luck on the manual dexterity round. The
whole process looks fiendishly complicated
but somehow you wouldn't mind a go
yourself.
Jet Pilot gives the opportunity to do just this.
It would be safe lo say that what Vulcan is
offering here is pretty much die most realistic
flight simulator written for the Amiga. Needless
to say this means it requires patience, skill,
intelligence and about five hands.
Almost every aspect of flying a modern jet
has been reproduced here including flight
parameters that come within 10 per cent of
real aircraft, changing weather conditions and
27 air bases from the Eastern Mediterranean to
Scotland, letpilot is absolutely packed full of
options - there are three planes you can fly:
The Lightning, Starfighter or Mig 21, on a huge
variety of missions from formation flying to
combat intercept missions.
To be honest, letpilot is something you will
either love or hate, it really depends on what
you look for in a computer game. It isn't
something you can just play for 15 minutes
while waiting for Neighbours to start. Because
At the risk of sounding
inane, this plane is the
coolest cos it looks so smart
This is the
chopped and
lowered version
of the complexity of the simulation you really
need to get to know the game and practice
flying the jets and using features such as the
radio communications and ground tracking.
Because of the inherent realism,
the planes despite being quite easy
to handle, aren't as forgiving as
in other less realistic sims -
take off too steeply and the
tail will drag on the ground
and destroy the plane. Land
too fast and the tyres will
burst, letpilot is a very
impressive product and flight
sim buffs will be happy as pigs
in mud, however I do get the
feeling the game will appear too
complicated and perhaps intimidating for
those who aren't as well aquatintcd with sims.
This said, letpilot is a step forward tor the
Amiga. Spec wise the game is pretiy hungry
but it shows the strength of the computer -
there isn't, lo my knowledge, a game that
comes near it on the PC in terms of realism
and detail. The graphics are excellent, the
planes are realistic right down lo the smallest
detail with even individual markings visible.
AMIGA ACTION FEATURE
Ha! Beat him from the
lights, c'mon you big girl,
catch up!
The geography is completely detailed and
realistic - take off from a North Wales air base
and you'll be able to see Anglesey in one
direction and the Wirral in the other.
jetPilot will run on pretiy much any
Amiga but, like many of Vulcan's
new products, favours higher
spec machines. On a 1 MB or
2MB system some features
will have to be disabled.
However, on a souped up
A1200orA4000the
simulation will run like a
dream. If you have a fairly
* high spec Amiga and are a flight
sim buff this game is tailor made
for you.
Some mention also has to be made
of the price - at £16.99 JetPilot is very
competitively priced lor such a high quality
game, you will certainly get your moneys
worth out of this one. The simplest missions,
such as just taking off and circling are
complicated enough to master, so with 20
qualification missions and loads of combat
missions there is more than enough to keep
you occupied for donkeys years.