F-19 Stealth Fighter
| Developer: MicroProse | Graphics: |
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| Publisher: MicroProse | Sound: |
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| Year: 1990 | Difficulty: |
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| Genre: Flight simulation | Lastability: |
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| Number of players: 1 | Rating: |
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The original version, released in 1987 on the Commodore 64, was titled Project Stealth Fighter.
This time, the aircraft I’m (vainly) asked to pilot is a stealth bomber (either the F-19 or F-117A, take your pick), and the theatres of operation are set in Libya, the Persian Gulf, and Central Europe (I could’ve sworn I recognised that green polygon).
The gameplay stands out markedly from other flight simulators, though they all share the same hefty instruction manual and a bewildering array of keyboard shortcuts. Here, the goal isn’t to shoot down every plane in sight but to remain unseen. You’re expected to fly low and slow to avoid radar detection. Moreover, the action leans heavily towards strategic bombing rather than aerial dogfights—your aircraft simply isn’t built for those.
Don’t be too disheartened; you’re equipped with the most expensive tech of the era (don’t ask me to explain it) and an arsenal sophisticated enough to rival a star destroyer. I do enjoy a bit of strategy, the kind that involves things going boom.
The game box included a keyboard overlay, a transparent sheet to place over the keyboard that labelled every key and its function. Without this handy gadget—or worse, without the manual—you wouldn’t stand a ghost of a chance.
A little backstory: the F-19 never officially existed. It was an ’80s rumour born from a gap in the US military’s aircraft numbering system. We had the iconic F-14 “Tomcat” (Top Gun, The Final Countdown), the F-15 “Eagle” (popularised by Transformers toys), the F-16 “Falcon”, the YF-17 “Cobra”, the F/A-18 “Hornet”, and then the F-20 “Tigershark”.
Urban legend had it that number 19 belonged to a top-secret stealth plane, fuelling the imaginations of screenwriters and game developers for years—right up until 1988, when the real stealth aircraft, the F-117A, was unveiled. MicroProse eventually dedicated a new simulator to it a few years later. Following the announcement, the F-117A was conveniently added to F-19 Stealth Fighter, which was already in development for the Amiga, Atari, and PC.
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