F-22 Lightning II • Novalogic 1996 DOS

There was a certain craze about the Lockheed F-22 in the 90s. Several games included this state-of-the-art plane still in developement - Jet Fighter 2, ATAC, Strike Commander, US Navy Fighters to name early few. This was the first Novalogic entry in the series and the only one released for DOS, with F-22 Raptor and F-22 Lightning 3 released later for Windows. As with most Novalogic games, realism wasn't its main focus - rather pure fun, blasting action and amazing presentation with eye bleeding graphics at the forefront. The flight modelling was a bit wonky, but overall it did its job. Armament was barebones - only M-61 Vulcan, AIM-9X Sidewinders, AIM-120 AMRAAMs and GPS guided JDAM bombs were modelled. Missions ranged from air sweeps, striking ground targets, scrambles, escorts and the mix of all of those. Novalogic acquired proper licence for the F-22 from Lockheed for their flight sims which enabled them to use their trademarks, but overall Digital Image Design made the superior depiction of this awesome bird in spite of lack of official support from Lockheed in their F-22 Air Dominance Fighter and Total Air War. But for a pure fun factor nothing beat dropping tactical nuke in F-22 Flghtning 3 and trying to escape its shock blast...

I included 2 mission outcomes in the video to showcase both failed and completed stats screen and their respective music themes.

The game works nicely on DOSBox 0.74-3.

0:00 Intro
1:23 Maim Menu
2:54 1st Mission Attempt
10:53 Mission Failed Stats Screen
11:41 2nd Mission Attempt
22:30 Mission Completed Stats Screen
22:49 Credits

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