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Retaliator 2, announced in 1990 to be released in the first quarter of 1991, was never released as the team concentrated on finishing EPIC (released in 1992 and using an improved engine of F29), but DID would later create three further, much more realistic F-22 simulators:
TFX (1993)
F-22: Air Dominance Fighter (1997)
F-22 Total Air War (1998)

O cean's first flight sim is certainly ambitious, simulating not only the next generation of fighters, but also the jets to replace them.
Retaliator begins with the pilot enrolling in the Air Force at any of five ranks (1st Lieutenant up to Colonel). Once cleared for pilot status by a retina-scan security routine your military career can begin. You can either go direct into war with the arcade-style Zulu Alert, starting in midair with unlimited weapons, or pick a scenario. Serious pilots will start at the Arizona Test Range, but there's also three warzones to visit. You can choose either an F-29 or an F-22 and must stick to it through your saved career.

The Test Range is your best bet if you want to get the feel of your new aerial 'office'. Various remotely-controlled targets and drones are scattered throughout the 1000-odd miles making up the Range. Tanks, Trucks, bridges, industrial plants, command centres, airbases, SAM sites and more provide target fodder for ground attacks while drone MiG-29 Fulcrums practice patrols around the Range skies, eager for an air-to-air to take them out. Get the plane up into the wild blue yonder and you'll immediately notice the smooth control and incredible agility of the aircraft.

But thankfully you don't need to be a genius to fly the planes. Three console monitors provide all the data you need to perform your mission, selecting through the displays brings up an amazing array of radars, indicators and moving maps. External views are also available for you to admire yourself from, as is a view from a satellite. Autopilot is provided, with electronic countermeasures (ECM, which jams radar), plus chaff and flares (to distract enemy missiles).

While you're in the States it's a good idea to put the aircraft's weapons to the test, there's five types of air-to-air missiles to choose from, and four types of air-to-surface missile, all highly advanced and 'smart' with it. Load up with whatever weapons you want and use them to the full on the test range. In the warzones you may well experience weapon shortages, so this may be the best chance you get to play around with AGM-10H Cruise Missiles, Back-Winders, Conventional Stand Off Weapons and the rest.

In the 21st Century the future of air power will be a mixture of superlative fighter agility and stealth tactics which is where the ATF fits right in. Shut down all the radars and the aircraft enters stealth mode, vital for passing through defence zones crammed full of surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) and heavy radar coverage. For high speed, high level flights kick in the Supercruise to thrust up to 100%.

Right, enough of this introductory talk. It's time to get into combat. Through the main option screen you can select the theatre of conflict. The three warzones are all hot spots for the US in the next 20 years and you're in the thick of it. Choose from the Middle East, the Pacific Solomos Islands (a USA colony rich in oil deposits but under threat from enemy naval attack and invasion), and the Big One -–conventional war in Central Europe.

Once a warzone is selected you find yourself in Mission Control. From here you can select the type of plane you want to fly, the base you want to start the tour of duty from, the armament and finally the mission to undertake. The ten Arizona Test Missions were merely the beginning because now you've got an enemy going all out to conquer, and ready to fire back at you with extreme prejudice!

Like real life you can't tackle a mission that theoretically occurred towards the end of the war, after all you've only just started! Only by completing missions and surviving the air war do more missions come to light (in the form of War Updates). For instance, in the Pacific warzone the first few missions aren't too demanding at all (down a few MiGs, hit a small enemy oil depot, and so on) but with time the war situation changes, new War Updates appear, and ever harder different missions crop up (ranging from crippling a Super Tanker to defending the New Jersey from all out attack, or even taking on an Aircraft Carrier!).

While I, like Robin, am a great fan of military aircraft, until now I'd never been hooked on a sim. F-16 Combat Pilot had the depth, but its realistic toughness could be irritating while Falcon still lacks any real depth of scenario even with the Mission Disk. First impressions of F-29 are set by a great rock track and some utterly mouth-watering graphics. To plane buffs like me the futuristic aircraft are exciting, while to other the hi-tech displays and superlative performance are a great jump over the ancient F-16.
For the first few hours you just whiz around admiring the graphics at 'idiot' level: the massive aircraft, the amazing battlefields with battalions of tanks skirmishing, and the superbly contoured islands. Ocean have provided the easy accessibility of Interceptor with state-of-the-art graphics and an amazing depth of play. It's going to be a lot of late nights with this one, I'm afraid!


In the good few years that I've been into flight simulations I've seen quite a bit of bad but more often than not quite a bit of good. Interceptor on the Amiga was good and so too was the classic Project Stealth Fighter on the 64. Up until today the latter title was my all time favorite; now F-29 Retaliator is the way forward. When you take the superlative flight handling and realism of Falcon and couple it with the outstanding mission depth of F-16 Combat Pilot you suddenly find yourself with what I must regard as the best flight simulation I have ever seen (and there's nothing on the visible horizon that looks set to come close).
The realism of flight is extremely fluent and convincing (made all the more exciting considering the current lack of ATFs to compare it with). Then there's the graphic quality which inches the whole flight simulation field ever nearer to those multi-million pound Rediffusion full-blown flight sims. Throw in infinite depth, with a mind-blowing number of missions, four totally different warzones, masses of enemies to fight, and first class presentation at every point in the game and you have a program that is everything I could possibly have hoped for in a flight simulation. It's not a simulation, it's an experience.

Ocean have always been known for their fun, arcade-style games and apart from Top Gun haven't come within F-29 range of a flight sim. Since I'm normally bored stiff by flight sims that hasn't bothered me, but now they have and... it's great. Like Interceptor a few years back, F-29's got the incredible graphics, presentation, and 'idiot/arcade' skill levels to get absolute beginners involved. The 3-D effect is extremely attractive and unbelievably fast (embarrassingly so when it comes to flying the plane). The plane alone boasts a very large number of polygons, plus highly convincing shading as well.
Fly around the warzones on a sight-seeing trip and you may well spot tanks engaged in fierce combat, SAM sites moments before they fire at you (gulp!), and cooling towers with nuclear reactors nearby to bomb (double gulp!). The islands in the Pacific scenario are wonderful to see, with sandy beaches and shallows all around – I haven't played many flight sims in my time but this is undoubtedly the best looking one I've seen.
In fact, I've had such great fun in the arcade option, where I don't have to bother with the engines, landing, radars etc, that I may well start on the serious stuff. Biggles Hogg, here I come!


6 4
There are no plans for a C64 version.
u p d a t e


PRESENTATION 92%
While the manual isn't anything like MicroProse 'War and Peace' efforts it is still very informative and matched by a wealth of options and peripheral screens.
GRAPHICS 96%
Beautifully detailed, fast moving polygon graphics together with immensely varied ground detail.
SOUND 94%
Great rock track, plus amazing sound FX from gunshots to the groan of the pilot during high G-turns!
HOOKABILITY 94%
Flight sim enthusiasts will go for it instantly, while novices will be tempted by the outstanding graphics.
LASTABILITY 98%
Complete a scenario at the lowest of skill levels and you've still got a long way to go before tiring of this beauty.
OVERALL
97%
Ocean's first flight sim is the best out, and an incredibly fun game!

Title F29 Retaliator
Game Type Flight Sim
Players 1
Compatibility ECS (AGA patch available)
Submission Angus Manwaring Profiled Reviewer

Review
Few games have been so eagerly anticipated as F29 Retaliator. I remember
thumbing through my copy of The One gazing adoringly at the gorgeous terrain
that the aircraft was flying over, thinking, “Yes, yes, yes!” The wait was almost
unbearable, a kind of foreshadowing of the TFX fiasco if you like. More
adverts, more Work in Progress reports, and more “Real Soon Now”
comments. Finally, though the game was released, and I happily handed over
my 30 quid......

Lots of games have a few bugs, particuarly the 3D ones, but as long as they
remain playable, I try not to get over excited about it. F29 had it`s share of
bugs, including a glitch in the compass sprite that I`d of thought they`d have
spotted, but this was not my main gripe. The thing is, F29 was probably a
generation ahead of the competition in terms of the quality of the 3D landscape,
and the speed of the screen update, and until you actually played it, that was just
dandy. On playing it though, you began to see how DID had secured their
apparent advantage. The ships in particular moved in a very jerky fashion,
making a course change of perhaps 30 or 40 degrees in a single frame, far from
the smooth animation we`d expected, but for me the absolute pits was the
collision detection. Imagine a beautiful island set in a sea of turquoise, the pae
blue shallows splashing about the golden beaches, the island itself dominated by
a majestic mountain. You`re in the coolest fighter aircraft on the face of God`s
Earth, whaddya gonna do?? Obvious, innit, buzz the mountain, screech down
there in your warplane and introduce a few bunnies to the dubious joys of the
sonic boom! Wrong. Because although the mountain looks like a very tasty
mountain, the computer sees it as a cube, it presumably makes the game run
faster if the collision detection is that much less complex. Result: Splat! Please
insert disk one. Your joking? Nope, I`m afraid not.

There maybe a lot of fun to be had with F29 for some people, but I`m not one
of them. Foolishly I believed the hype and bought the game on the strength of it.
The inevitable result was I hugely disappointed. Sigh.