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Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer: My 13th Favourite Video Game

Thanks Chuck
Released: 1987
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Platform: Apple II, DOS, Commodore 64, Tandy 1000, various others
Type: Flight Simulator
Graphics: Meh
Game Play: Narly
Originality: Narly
How many hours I’ve wasted: Blank Eyed Soulless Stare
The Nostalgia Factor: Narly


Chuck Yeager’s* Advanced Flight Trainer was one of the better pioneering flight simulator games of the late 80’s. Taking into account the limited computing capabilities of the 1980’s, AFT in my opinion still stands out as being nothing short of phenomenal.

AFT included a number of aircraft to choose from, all with different flying characterstics even among aircraft from the same generation:

SR-71 from tower view... looks like an F-16 to me.
Sopwith Camel
Cessna 172
Piper Cherokee
F-16 Fighting Falcon
F-18 Hornet
P-51 Mustang
Spad
Supermarine Spitfire
Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird
Bell X-1
Douglas X-3 Stiletto

Being an aircraft buff, particularly in regards to warplanes, AFT was like mana from heaven. Finally, a chance to fly a Spitfire!

Okay... granted there wasn't much differnce in the look of the aircraft and cockpits, beyond the obvious prop plane and jet graphic representations (graphic variation being the only lacking item in this game). But it was an exciting and challenging game to play... and still is 25 years on. AFT also featured flight recording for playback, and various flight analysis features and flying modes such as racing. Not too shabby for a game that all fit on one 5" floppy.

My fondest memory of AFT was competing with my brother to break each other’s altitude records in an SR-71 Blackbird… followed immediately by trying to break each other’s speed records in a dive. The record only held if you successfully landed the plane… which almost never happened. The wings usually deformed and tore away from the fuselage turning the expensive jet into an uncontrolled ballistic missile. I seem to remember recovering from the dive and successfully landing the aircraft only once. Too bad the record didn’t count as my brother wasn’t present. Still, it was fun creating rather large craters and having Chuck mouth us off with various flippant comments for writing the plane off. 

AFT was superseded by AFT Version 2.0 in 1989. Version 2 featured brilliantly improved graphics, additional features, more aircraft (and even the space shuttle) with acurate graphic respresentations  and a cassette featuring flying tips from Chuck Yeager himself (I still have the original game discs and cassette!) Both games are now considered abandonware and are downloadable from here and here if you're into nostalgia gaming (although you'll need to download and install DOSBox to play them.)

*Historical Note: For those of you unfamiliar with history, on October 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager was the first human to pilot an aircraft (in this case the experimental Bell X-1 rocket plane) through the sound barrier in level flight.

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