F/A-18E Super Hornet + The Albanian Campaign • Digital Integration 2000 (Running on Windows 10)

Last of the flight sims from the great running series by Digital Integration - starting with Fighter Pilot (1983), Tomahawk (1985), F-16 Combat Pilot (1989), Tornado (1993), Apache (1995), Hind (1996), F-16 Fighting Falcon (1997) and finally F/A-18E Super Hornet (2000). Interestingly it came out 2 months after Jane's F/A-18. There were so many flight sims coming out in 90s, it's unthinkable now... Game featured titled F/A-18E Super Hornet, initially two theaters of operations - Barents Sea (North Cape) and Indian Ocean (India), later released mission pack added Adriatic Sea (Balkans). As usual training area was also provided - this time it was West Coast USA (around NAS Lemoore). There were no campaigns, you could select Quickstart, Training and Combat, although there was no dynamic campaign, you had the option to randomize parameters of the Combat missions to add some replayability. In base game there were 20 training missions and 40 unique combat sorties (+20 more in the mission pack). What was unique for this flight sim - the representation of the deck crew. Although we had the cat-shooter in a sprite form in USNF from 1994, here full blown crew of skittles was modelled. Fully 3D and animated, providing help on the deck during cat hook ups and obstruction, your engine could ingest, during unfauling the deck after succesful trap... Only after 20 years we got something similar with DCS Supercarrier module (sans collision detection). Other worth mentioning features - the cockpit was clickable, you had simplified ramp-start procedure (APU, then cranking each engine), fence-in/out procedures (radar, IFF, EW suite), more control over your wingman was added compared to previous titles, and finally the AI aircraft didn't made those weird circles at 15Gs and after being hit, instead of disappearing, their burning wreck trailed black smoke all the way to terra firma. For this showcase I chosed the mission similar to the one featured in Behind Enemy Lines flick which came one year after the Albanian Campaign addon was released. Quite a coincidence. Notes on how to make it run on Windows 10: This is retail version with Albanian mission pack. GOG version, if you got one before it got pulled out from the store (because it had problems running) should work too. • Install the game • For both F18.exe and CONFIG.EXE* set compatibility mode to Windows 98 / ME and tick run as admin, you can also tick "disable fullscreen optimization" but it's most likely not needed • Run CONFIG.EXE and in the "General" tab under "Select in-game Full Motion Video playback mode" select "None" radio button • You can start your game now with F18.exe [*] The game fails to run if the videos are enabled in the external CONFIG program. The quirk is that the main executable (F18.exe) needs Windows 98 compatibility mode, but if you disable the movies in CONFIG.EXE the game will still not work. You need to set Windows 98 compatibility mode on CONFIG.EXE as well. I'm pretty certain that the settings are written under different locations in the registry depending on the compatibility flag for CONFIG.EXE. I've noticed this by running CONFIG.EXE with and without compatibility flag and seeing there are basically two sets of saved settings depending on that comp flag. More early Windows games running on Windows 10:    • Running older (Windows) sims on Windows 10...   Flight sims from Digital Integration:    • Digital Integration Flight Sims   #RetroFlightSims 0:00 Intro 7:40 Title screen 8:00 Main menu 8:22 Mission briefing and planning 11:30 Mission start 13:20 Catapult hook-up 14:30 Picture clean, Fence-in - IFF, radar, EW suite, Master Arm 17:00 AAA suppresion 18:20 Engaging SA-8 19:00 Requesting picture from AWACS 19:18 MIGs on the scope 19:48 Fox 3 20:22 Fox 3 20:36 Both MIGs splashed 21:30 Recon at objective waypoint 21:44 Transmitting recon data 22:15 Accidently engaging AAA with AIM-9 :) 23:00 Checking wingman status 23:54 Deck crew chillin' 24:05 Looks like #2 is engaged with bandits, providing support 24:45 MIG-29 locked up 24:58 #2 taking a beating 25:11 Locked up by another closer bandit 25:31 I can't get that padlock view to behave 26:08 Fox 3 Close! 26:30 Another one on my 6 26:42 Head on pass 27:25 Can't keep up with him, trying the scissors 28:15 I'm below bingo, trying to bug out 28:29 Got hit! Trying to loose the pursuer in the weeds 28:48 Looks like nav is out 29:07 Spike dissapeared from RWR. Did he crashed? 30:08 Requesting vector to mother from AWACS 30:33 Taking ground fire 31:40 Fence out 32:22 Looks like #2 didn't make it 32:30 Checking in with Marshall 34:38 Call the ball 35:44 Taxi to parking 35:55 I didn't hit him. Faker! 36:01 Did my engine ingested something? 36:15 Another one down... 36:32 Shutting down and assessing damage (to the crew) 36:45 Damn, can't those 2 guys, looks like the crew chief will have to scrub them out from the inlet 37:19 Debriefing