Publisher: Electronic Arts/Jane’s Combat Simulation  Developer: Origin Systems  Year of Release: 1997 Platforms: PC Every gamer has someone who introduced them to the world of video games. For me, its my uncle who first showed me such gems as Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine running on an old Windows 95 machine. He and I were able to chat about games and perfectly understand. In fact, even to this day we still vanish off when he comes to visit to go and play PC games with a beer to give him a break from his kids.  However, one game that he owned that changed me forever and made me the PC gamer I am today. It was an old helicopter flight sim with the world’s foremost military intel agency name slapped on the front cover. Even its front cover was awesome. And the manual was about 2 inches thick. Jane’s Longbow 2 is a helicopter sim which put you in control of an Apache, a Kiowa or a Blackhawk. As its a sim, there is very little in the way of story, character or good voice acting in this game, so don’t expect many OMG moments. Also the game is from 1997. That’s 13 years ago. It came out a year after the Nintendo 64. It was rare to have graphics cards and no one had played Half Life. More importantly, I WAS ONLY FIVE! The back story to Longbow 2 is about a situation that in 1997 seemed pretty feasible to the military analysts at Jane. Basically Azerbaijan, Iran and Armenia starts kicking up a fuss over every possible thing from religion to oil. The USA, being the USA, decides to join in on the side of the Christians to keep the peace. It sounds stupid but the ring binded manual contains several pages of background filler ranging from analysts assessments of the Iranian army to predictions of the events of any wars that might take place. It is simultaneously awesome and scary as fuck to think a serious company would put so much work into a purely theoretical situation. Actually I love the box and the manual. You know how now a days your lucky if you get a manual that isn’t just controls and legal stuff? Longbow 2 comes with a ring binder manual, an installation guide, a multiplayer guide, reference chart and a cardboard sleeve on the box that has more than the usual hyperbole on. It makes opening it again after all these years fun, especially when you open the manual to find flight school level physics the game tells you to read before you play anything. It something we won’t have in the future of digital distribution as the coffee table size book spills out onto your desk. Once in game, the mission are all part of a dynamic campaign fought over Azerbaijan. Each mission depends on the actions in previous missions, supply lines, world opinion, enemy troop positions and your general’s overall tactic. At the start you pick your helicopter with its type giving you authentic missions. The Apache is the most varied, from close air support to hunter missions miles behind enemy lines, while the Kiowa is all about recon and marking targets for other units with a laser. The Blackhawk is all about troop carrying, which at first sounds boring but you try picking up special forces after a raid while being shot at by AA. Quite a few missions are simple repeats of each other while some are boring as hell (wow another patrol over friendly territory with no enemies? and its 30 minutes long? brilliant) but it still fun to play. On top of the missions, you also manage your own squadron. You can rotate guys from a roster of pilots, assign them roles as gunner or pilot and pick which ones you take on missions. You also pick what equipment and fuel your going to roll out with so if its a simply shipping run you can get the bare minimum so more can be saved for later missions when the Iranians are on the door step. The issue is the flying. Its a bit… crap. The features it offers are pretty good with a huge number of options and such like to tweak. The problem is it is so clunky as it was designed in an age before modern computing. Actual flight leave a lot to be desired.  Even simply cargo hauling missions are hard to do with the game’s flight model, which strikes me as being fine in 1997 but compared to other modern flight sims its awful. Similarly the graphics and sound are a bit crap which can make playing it slightly painful, with it being a bit too clean and the 2D dashboards looking too fake despite the level of detail. Which brings me on to another problem. Because the game came out before standards such as Direct X or having more than 366 mb of memory came out, it is a pain to get running on a modern PC. Without significant tweaks the game refuses to run. It require a huge investment in time to get the damn thing working properly which could be better spent playing other games that include helicopter simulation elements (like ARMA.) To get it working I had to run several other programs in the background to emulate the environment of a Windows 95 PC with parts from companies that no long exist. Not really acceptable but hey if you want nostalgia… Longbow 2 is a classic game for the time, but if taken and reviewed from today’s standards its absolute rubbish. However, in my heart it holds a special place – it was the first game I was given as a present and it was the first of many simulation games that have graced my desk. This game begs for a remake or a similar game, which the makers of Lock On may produce in a later Digital Combat Simulation game. But if your looking for a helicopter game now, this isn’t worth your time. Oh and the fact you can’t find it could be an issue. Sucks to be you without a copy of Longbow 2.

Publisher: Electronic Arts/Jane’s Combat Simulation 
Developer: Origin Systems 
Year of Release: 1997
Platforms: PC

Every gamer has someone who introduced them to the world of video games. For me, its my uncle who first showed me such gems as Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine running on an old Windows 95 machine. He and I were able to chat about games and perfectly understand. In fact, even to this day we still vanish off when he comes to visit to go and play PC games with a beer to give him a break from his kids.  However, one game that he owned that changed me forever and made me the PC gamer I am today. It was an old helicopter flight sim with the world’s foremost military intel agency name slapped on the front cover. Even its front cover was awesome. And the manual was about 2 inches thick.

Jane’s Longbow 2 is a helicopter sim which put you in control of an Apache, a Kiowa or a Blackhawk. As its a sim, there is very little in the way of story, character or good voice acting in this game, so don’t expect many OMG moments. Also the game is from 1997. That’s 13 years ago. It came out a year after the Nintendo 64. It was rare to have graphics cards and no one had played Half Life. More importantly, I WAS ONLY FIVE!

The back story to Longbow 2 is about a situation that in 1997 seemed pretty feasible to the military analysts at Jane. Basically Azerbaijan, Iran and Armenia starts kicking up a fuss over every possible thing from religion to oil. The USA, being the USA, decides to join in on the side of the Christians to keep the peace. It sounds stupid but the ring binded manual contains several pages of background filler ranging from analysts assessments of the Iranian army to predictions of the events of any wars that might take place. It is simultaneously awesome and scary as fuck to think a serious company would put so much work into a purely theoretical situation.

Actually I love the box and the manual. You know how now a days your lucky if you get a manual that isn’t just controls and legal stuff? Longbow 2 comes with a ring binder manual, an installation guide, a multiplayer guide, reference chart and a cardboard sleeve on the box that has more than the usual hyperbole on. It makes opening it again after all these years fun, especially when you open the manual to find flight school level physics the game tells you to read before you play anything. It something we won’t have in the future of digital distribution as the coffee table size book spills out onto your desk.

Once in game, the mission are all part of a dynamic campaign fought over Azerbaijan. Each mission depends on the actions in previous missions, supply lines, world opinion, enemy troop positions and your general’s overall tactic. At the start you pick your helicopter with its type giving you authentic missions. The Apache is the most varied, from close air support to hunter missions miles behind enemy lines, while the Kiowa is all about recon and marking targets for other units with a laser. The Blackhawk is all about troop carrying, which at first sounds boring but you try picking up special forces after a raid while being shot at by AA. Quite a few missions are simple repeats of each other while some are boring as hell (wow another patrol over friendly territory with no enemies? and its 30 minutes long? brilliant) but it still fun to play. On top of the missions, you also manage your own squadron. You can rotate guys from a roster of pilots, assign them roles as gunner or pilot and pick which ones you take on missions. You also pick what equipment and fuel your going to roll out with so if its a simply shipping run you can get the bare minimum so more can be saved for later missions when the Iranians are on the door step.

The issue is the flying. Its a bit… crap. The features it offers are pretty good with a huge number of options and such like to tweak. The problem is it is so clunky as it was designed in an age before modern computing. Actual flight leave a lot to be desired.  Even simply cargo hauling missions are hard to do with the game’s flight model, which strikes me as being fine in 1997 but compared to other modern flight sims its awful. Similarly the graphics and sound are a bit crap which can make playing it slightly painful, with it being a bit too clean and the 2D dashboards looking too fake despite the level of detail. Which brings me on to another problem.

Because the game came out before standards such as Direct X or having more than 366 mb of memory came out, it is a pain to get running on a modern PC. Without significant tweaks the game refuses to run. It require a huge investment in time to get the damn thing working properly which could be better spent playing other games that include helicopter simulation elements (like ARMA.) To get it working I had to run several other programs in the background to emulate the environment of a Windows 95 PC with parts from companies that no long exist. Not really acceptable but hey if you want nostalgia…

Longbow 2 is a classic game for the time, but if taken and reviewed from today’s standards its absolute rubbish. However, in my heart it holds a special place – it was the first game I was given as a present and it was the first of many simulation games that have graced my desk. This game begs for a remake or a similar game, which the makers of Lock On may produce in a later Digital Combat Simulation game. But if your looking for a helicopter game now, this isn’t worth your time. Oh and the fact you can’t find it could be an issue. Sucks to be you without a copy of Longbow 2.