Jetfighter II

by Velocity

Product Features

• Collectable DOS computer game.
• Unsurpassed range of features.
• Revolutionary animation lets you see parachutes opening in the wind, radar chaff blooming behind your jet, landing gear deploying and retracting.
• AdLib/SoundBlaster support.
• Includes F/A-18 Hornet, F-16 Falcon, F-14 Tomcat.

Product Details

• ASIN: B0006373KQ
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7 x 0.5 inches ; 1.1 pounds
• Media: CD-ROM
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #19,169 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

PC Magazine crowned Jetfighter the "best flight simulator on a desktop computer, period!" Now the hottest flight simulator/combat adventure ever continues with Jetfighter II: Advanced Tactical Fighter. Jetfighter II destroys the competition with advanced 3-D simulation technology featuring the new F-23 Advanced Tactical Fighter, complete with breathtaking scenery, the fastest, smoothest 256-color VGA graphics in the industry, booming AdLib sounds and the most spectacular jet dogfight action you will ever experience! The most advanced and powerful 3-D technology, period! Accurate time of day and sky coloration. Revolutionary animation lets you see parachutes opening in the wind, radar chaff blooming behind your jet, landing gear deploying and retracting. Real-time artificial intelligence for simulating the enemy to provide the most realistic dogfights imaginable. Wide range of conventional and top secret weapons. Includes F/ A-18 Hornet, F-16 Falcon, F-14 Tomcat. Spectacular time-acceleration feature. Instant flying mode for beginners- gets you in the air and flying immediately. Interactive hypertext help system. AdLib/ SoundBlaster support. Tunable joystick system for responsive controls. The best 3-D VGA graphics you've ever seen! Animation so smooth it will take your breath away! Real-world cityscapes. Light source shading. Accurate shadowing. Incredible midnight dogfights. Realistic modeling of the F-23, the most lethal fighter ever built. Blending radar stealth, smart weapons, and breakthrough aerodynamic design allowing speeds of Mach 3! Strap yourself into the most technologically advanced fighter aircraft of all time! Over 100 diverse and accurate combat missions. Now you can get in a dogfight with multiple MiG-29 Fulcrums! Experience the nightmare of evading SAMs homing on your signal! Every mission designed to keep you pumped with adrenaline! State or the art avionics. The most accurate carrier landing simulation ever.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Ever, November 3, 2007

By 

A. B. Long "memory master" (Atlanta, Georgia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Jetfighter II (CD-ROM)

This fighter sim was the bestof its day. Not too complicated...not to easy. It's a game not a career.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Carrier landings were the high-point; otherwise this sim failed by 1990's standards., May 30, 2007

By 

Rottenberg's rotten book review (nyc) - See all my reviews

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Jetfighter II (CD-ROM)

It's hard to imagine anybody considering this a collectable DOS game when, surface sheen aside, it was already an afterthought when it appeared in '91. The first JF game (offering only Hornet, F-16 & Tomcat) was somewhat cool when it appeared in 1989. For many of us, it was the game we tested our VGA cards on. It was gorgeous at the time but even so, it took little to realize how little it offered. Sure, you had spot view (you could see landing gear and arrestor hooks, and on the F-14, wing-sweep as you accelerated; you could follow missiles directly to their target and bombs through their decent) and the west coast to play around with, satisfyingly challenging carrier landing and a bunch of bridges to fly under.

And that was it. There was little difference in the aircraft available - maneuvering was about the same. (There was no arrestor hook on the F-16, but wheel brakes made it unnecessary.) You got Phoenix missiles on the F-14, but all missiles pretty much worked the same. The flight panel was unbelievably basic and useless. The HUD contained few usable target cues, and was useless in close-in fights. (Among other things, the HUD lacked a flight path ladder which, along with a rudimentary artificial horizon, left you blind, attitude-wise, when you were either above or below the horizon.) Similarly, the dead-simple radar (top-down) scaled-down only so far, making it also useless for dogfighting. Bombsight? Forget it - it's dead reckoning for bombs, assuming you want to use em' (it was easier to take out ground targets with missiles which worked as easily against large building as they did on small airplanes). The weapons load-out was the same for every mission; the AG & AA weapons were cycled on a single circuit, and you could only cycle in one direction; also, the AA weapons cycled from lowest ranged to longest - exactly the reverse of the order in which they are typically required. Also, you're probably best off choosing one weapon and sticking with it - cycling through AG weapons breaks radar lock (!?!?)

The game was built on a wild premise of having California invaded - which would have been nifty had the sim actually depicted any enemy. Instead, you've got the Bay Area of California looking pretty much as a low-grade civilian flight sim of the time would have made it look - no military targets to speak of, a few SAMs appear out of nowhere (don't worry, they're entirely ineffective) and MiGs already in the air. It's almost like Microsoft Flight Sim with guns, but nothing to shoot at. (Actually, FS4b, the latest version coinciding with the release of JF2, looked a whole lot prettier.) Add in flat and featureless terrain and indifferent sound, and you've got a recipe for a combat sim that was impossible to stay focused on. It's like a combat sim that the publishers forgot to include combat.

So, why dwell on JF2's prequel? Mostly because JF2 brings almost nothing new, repeating virtually every mistake of JF1 with a fresh box. You've got a new plane, the F-23, Northrop's contender for the ATF contract, which actually lost out a short while after the game was released. (Bidding on the wrong horse was simply bad luck, but it raises the question of what could have been accomplished had Velocity sat on this one at least a few weeks longer; an add-on pack released during the summer of '92 allowed you to fly the F-22 so you could decide if the USAF chose the right airplane, though I suspect that given the near-identical flight models for the other JF2 airplanes, it would just have made you wonder whether you'd chosen the right flight-sim game.)

The F-23 is faster, yet as maneuverable as the other jets, and range is never an issue in JF2 even with liberal use of afterburner. It's still an easy choice given that its higher speed means boring flights are shorter. The F-23 comes with a new weapon, unguided, kinetic-kill weapons which are impossible to aim given JF2's dirt-simple fire-control. A single one-way AA/AG weapons circuit, still wrong-way, is back; even though you can choose load-outs, you can't make specific choices of weapons, and you still have to cycle through weapons you've either used up or didn't bring along at all. Sound and graphics are conspicuously undeveloped from JF1 and, as in that last game, you have to imagine an enemy not depicted in the game itself. The biggest riddle of all is how somebody found enough of interest in this game to write a hint-book. If you're looking for a great "modern" combat flight sim released before "Falcon 3.0", I'd suggest "Flight of the Intruder" or even "Chuck Yeager's Air Combat".