Chuck Yeager's Air Combat

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Name: Chuck Yeager's Air Combat Year: 1991 Publisher: Electronic Arts Developer: Electronic Arts Platform: PC Genre: Simulation Total rating: 90% - rated 22 times rate now: please log in to rate Submitter: Grobut Score: 10 points Added: Feb 04 2006 Warez status: Abandonware

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Author: Grobut Date: Feb 04 2006 - 03:28 Score: 35 points

Background

In the olden days of yonder, circa late 80's to early 90's, Electronic Arts teamed up with Fighter Ace
and famed test pilot Chuck Yeager to create a series of flight simulators, the last of which was "Chuck
Yeager's air combat" (or CYAC for short).
Chuck, apart from lending his name to the series, served as technical advisor in their creation, and it is
said he fought and bickered a lot with the EA developers to get as much realism included in the sim as he
possibly could, and it shows!


The good, the bad, and the singletone sVGA graphics!

As you start up CYAC, you are immediately greeted by an 8-bit recording of Chuck, saying either "Its a
good day for flying!" or "Welcome to Chuck Yeager's Air Combat!", and a very clean and manageable main
menu, but no options screen, this may seem puzzling at first, till you figure out it is available by pressing the
Escape key in-game.
Thouse who have played later simulators like "Aces over Europe" or "SU-25 Sturmovik" should feel immediately
at home with the menu's and features.

At first the horrendously simple 386 era graphics may put some people off, they are bland, to say the least,
ahh, but for thouse who dare dig deeper awaits a true gem, a giant amongst classic simulators! a milestone
that helped set the standards for sim's to come.

CYAC impresses me to this very day, the AI was really fun to play against, not too hard in a 1 on 1 situation,
but as with real air combat, its usually the guys Wingman that gets you!
And then there is all the content it actually offers, a staggering 50 historical missions, 6 flyable aircraft, an
easy to use mission builder, replays, and, at the time, the most realistic flight and damage modelling available,
but more on that later.

Probably the most striking feature of CYAC is that it does not just simulate air combat spanning one war,
but three wars, namely World War 2, Korea and Vietnam, with historical missions, flyable aircraft and
of course appropriate targets for all three era's, If you ever wanted to follow in Chuck's footsteps, here's
your chance!

Aircraft types

World War 2:
P-51D "Mustang"
FW-190A-8 "Würger"

Korea:
F-86E "Sabre"
MIG-15 "Fagot"

Vietnam:
F-4 "Phantom 2"
MIG-21MF "Fishbed"

Not too shabby, and as i recall, Chuck flew, or test flew them all.

More information about the planes, and how they compare to eachother in a head to head fight is available in the
briefing screens, and all missions come with a description of not just whats going to happen in the game, but what
actually happened in the real battle, a nice touch indeed.


Getting Airborne

CYAC features three modes of play, starting with "Fly Historical mission", where you choose a war, and then
between the 16-17 missions available for each war, ranging from ground attack, bomber escort, bomber interception,
fighter versus fighter furballs, and even reconnaissance and defection missions, which will provide for hours of play.
Considering that CYAC in its entirety will fit on a single 1.44 meg Floppy, the missions are surprisingly detailed,
usually with a primary and secondary objective, as well as targets of opportunity, and anti aircraft fire like Flak or
even SAM's, the missions should last you a good while, and are certainly replayable and challenging!

Then there is the simple mission builder "Create Mission", where you by following a few steps, which will eventually
form a sentence along the lines of "There is was at 5000 feet, when i was jumped by five ME-110's, the guys in
thouse planes where mediocre", you simply choose your plane, starting altitude, wether you are at an advantage,
disadvantage or equal footing with them, what they will be flying, and then their skill level, and off you go for a quick
furball.

Also there is the "Test Flight" mode, where you can freely take one of the six flyable aircraft for a flight,
and practice your takeoff / flying / landing skills.

And last but not least there is the replay function, where you can record your flights, save them, and view them again and
again, quite nicely done as well for its time.


The actual flying

Well then, lets start with the cockpits, your new office, which i must say, considering the sim's limitations, do a very
good job of informing you of your situation, all vital gauges and indicators are there and working, and look very good for the
period, be sure to read the included "Flight-guide.txt" by yours truly if you are unfamiliar with anything here.

The flight model does a good job of it too, each plane feels different to fly, and adhere nicely to real world top speeds and
maneuverability, as you would expect, the P-51 will out turn an FW-190 but not an ME-109, the MIG-15 has a good turn
time but the F-86E is faster in the level, and so on, the historical matchups are definitely intact, and if you wish to win, you
must be prepared to use your aircrafts strong points against your opponents weak points, thankfully, Chuck can tell you more
about these in the briefing menu's.
And beware of thouse blackouts and aircraft overspeed, In 1991, this was as real as it got!

But there is no reason for the newbie to fret, you can allways enable the "Yeager window", and Chuck will pop up to give
you usefull advice on what to do, and there are a host of other newbie helps available, like easy aiming, easy landing,
unlimited ammo, invincibility, no blackouts and so on.

CYAC also features good damage modeling, in that it is not on or off, the radiator can be damaged, the pilot wounded,
control cables damaged and so on, sending you limping home on a wing and a prayer, the smart pilot knows when to cut
his losses and head for home!

I used to play this sim almost exclusively as a kid, and learned my basic flight-sim skills on it, and even when flying the
sim's of today, i find myself drawing on the things i learned whilst flying CYAC.. ahh, good times..


The grand finale

This is a great sim, make no mistake, and i can only recommend it, as i sit here with my reviewers hat on i feel i should have
something bad to say about it as well, but i find i just can't, i could nitpick about the lack of controll customization, the
graphics, the somewhat simplistic flight dynamics, but in 1991 this went above and beyond the norm, only by comparing it to
modern flightsims can i find anything remotely bad to say about it, but you just can't compare a sim from 1991 to a sim from 2006.

So if you have a passion for flight, and a hankering for nostalgia, waste no time getting this golden oldie! you wont regret it.

	Type / Title	Downloads / Views	Action
	Download full game	1155	Download
	Playing in 3rd Person	2476	Read
	Cheats	2409	Read
	Game Manual	697	Download

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By Wenieo - Jul 07 2015 - 07:10 still my favorite game

By Bee_94 - Dec 04 2014 - 16:43 Manuals can be used with Firefox.

By Canarysurf - Nov 21 2012 - 14:57 game manual download dosnt work

By GEKO - Aug 27 2009 - 11:43 Great game!!! I loved it...

By Blargen - Feb 08 2009 - 21:13 This is what most modern games are made of... Games just like this one.

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