Wow... bookmarked. F-15 Strike Eagle II is one of those games I played the hell out of as a child. So much so I wore out two joysticks that my parents bought as a result.
I was a child so it took me a long time to learn to actually do what the game wanted, and then learn after taking out the targets you got more medals by then bombing or strafing other targets. I don't think I ever got the hang of landing back on the aircraft carrier though.
F-19 was my first flightsim (well, some on the Commodore 64 I never got the hang with were the actual first).
I had a pirated copy. Back then, nobody own legit games in my country. It was hilarious that the copy protection gave you a top down view of an aircraft and made you look up the name in the manual.
Yeah... for me, an aircraft-obsessed teenager who knew all the shapes, this was the same as no copy protection at all :) If anything, it trained me in recognizing the shapes of all aircraft of that era!
PS: I was sad when I learned the F-19 was never a real thing. That said, sometime later MicroProse came up with the F-117, which we know was a real thing.
I owned multiple Microprose games and the manuals that came with the games were simply fantastic.
There would be a section on the gameplay itself and then usually some historical reference about the setting of the game. E.g. if it was a WW1 flight combat simulator, there would be a section on the history of aerial dogfighting and then specs on each plane.
I know that nowadays it's common knowledge that most people don't read the manuals and it's easier to get people into a game with a combination first level /introduction/tutorial. That being said, I feel like we lost something by taking out the manuals with all that rich historical detail.
Yes the Battle of Britain game (not by Microprose but LucasArts) actually came with a whole history book. I read it for English class, my teacher deemed it decent enough quality for that (English is not my primary language so picking high-quality literature wasn't really a priority).
It really added so much to the game. Many other games came with cool things in the box too, like Wing Commander with the blueprints of each fighter.
I guess part of the reason was that the games themselves weren't all that immersive. There were no cutscenes or long narrative. The tech simply wasn't there yet. The included box items made it more interesting and immersive.
I miss the simulation games of that era. They’ve pretty much faded away. At one point I dove back in a bit but everything was so janky trying to run that I quickly lost interest.
I was a child so it took me a long time to learn to actually do what the game wanted, and then learn after taking out the targets you got more medals by then bombing or strafing other targets. I don't think I ever got the hang of landing back on the aircraft carrier though.