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JUMP
JET
Anirog,
£9.95 cass, £11.95 disk, joystick with keys
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Yet
another flight simulator hits the market, although this
one contains speech (Anirog's own), making it different
from all the others. Flying a VTOL Hawker Harrier is
simulated here, with take-off and landing done from
the deck of a ship (which makes it quite tricky).
To
add a little spice, Anirog have introduced seek-and-destroy
missions. The better you do on these, the more likely
are your chances of rising through the five ranks which
act as levels: Practice, Flight Lieutenant, Squadron
Leader, Wing Commander, and Group Captain, being the
hardest, not allowing you to make many mistakes. Also
the weather conditions decrease through the ranks, starting
off with calm weather on the practice level and ending
on Group Captain with stormy weather and mountainous
seas.
When you first start the simulation you are put on the
deck of the ship. The screen shows a view from above
the ship, with your plane on deck. Once you have lifted
into the air the screen splits into two, showing a side
and an above view of the ship with your instrument panel
at the bottom; thus making take-off a lot easier. Once
you are clear of the deck, the simulator reverts to
the usual view through the cockpit window.
The
takeoff screen, looking vertically down on
the Carrier's deck with the Jump Jet in the
centre at a standstill.
Take-off
itself isn't too hard, simply move the engine thrusters
downwards and increase thrust to its maximum. When you
have taken off you will hover over the ship. Move thruster
engines to 45 degrees and you will fly clear of the
ship. Once you are well clear, put the thrusters to
horizontal and you can start flying.
There
is always an enemy plane within a certain distance of
the ship, lock your radar onto it and switch on your
missiles and machine guns. Once you have it in sight
you can shoot it down (not too easy since the plane
twists and turns to avoid you). When you have completed
your mission you must find the ship and land your plane
to refuel and take on more missiles. Quite a difficult
operation is this one and prepare yourself for many
pancakings before being able to land properly!
The
instrument panel contains what you need to fly a Jump
Jet. There is the usual speed indicator, bearing meter,
fuel gauge, altimeter, flap and gear condition, and
power meter. There is also the radar which shows your
ship and enemy planes, a panel to show which way your
thrusters are pointing, number of missiles carried,
an artificial horizon, warning total, and elapsed mission
time.
There
are several ways of failing to complete the mission.
Obviously crashing your plane will finish the mission
(and you), colliding or being shot down by an enemy
plane and crashing on deck are other untidy ways to
go. There are also warnings given for bad flying. On
the practice you are allowed unlimited warnings, but
throughout the ratings they decrease down to three.
When a warning is given, a beep will sound. If you aren't
on the practice level then one warning will be added
to your total. Too many warnings and you'll be forced
to bail out. You can pick up warnings for making seven
different types of mistakes, so on high levels very
careful flying with much concentration is needed.
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I'm not too keen on flight simulators and this one consolidated
the fact that there are far more exciting programs on
the market. There were quite a few bad points about
it, like the horizon not tilting and the control of
the aircraft itself, which
seemed too quick to respond to movement, especially
while hovering over the deck when one tap on the joystick
sent the plane yawing. The graphics are reasonable as
far as instrumentation goes, but failed to convince
me that I was really flying something as complex as
a Harrier. Program content seemed a little flabby, too,
although once having taken off successfully some of
the missions hot things up a bit. It's a shame that
Anirog couldn't have produced a flight sim to match
the high quality music on the title screen.
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