Description Rule the night! Take the pride of American Stealth technology and take on the best the Warsaw pact technology can offer! Dodge between radars, sneak under enemy fighters, and take out your primary objectives and secondary objectives with your limited weapons onboard, then make your way home. Can you survive all the way to general and win the Congressional Medal of Honor?

F-19 Stealth Fighter was based around Sid Meier's closest estimate of the stealth fighter based on the data available at the time. You get full 3D graphics, 3D enemies, random objectives and enemy dispositions (so each mission will be different), dynamic radar effectiveness that depends on your position and radar cross section, enemies that search you out if you do "tickle" their defenses, even civilian aircrafts in the air, and ability to play in cold war, moderate war, or all-out war, with very different rules of engagement.

Trivia

Development

After the completion of Project Stealth Fighter for the Commodore 64 by designers Jim Synoski and Arnold Hendrick, Sid Meier and Andy Hollis were brought in to work on the PC conversion. Hendrick wrote of the new game, "The only thing borrowed from the C64 would be the game scenario concepts, military equipment research data, and perhaps some flight dynamics algorithms". Despite its planned 30 September 1988 release being delayed to mid-November F-19 Stealth Fighter was very popular, selling out in just two months.

MicroProse released the game on the same day that the United States military first admitted the existence of its F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter. Before the game's release many had speculated on a missing aircraft in the United States Air Force's numbering system, the F-19. The game was based on an educated guess about what the secret stealth fighter would be like. Subsequent revisions of the game incorporated the actual F-117 as well as the F-19.

The original boxed version of the game came with a range of impressive accessories - such as a thick manual full of information on the late 1980s flying machines of the U.S. and the USSR, various keyboard overlays, a comprehensive manual covering stealth and fighter tactics, and roughly-sketched maps of each warzone.

The 8-bit versions were called Project Stealth Fighter on the box, but F-19 Stealth Fighter in the loading screen. The fictional Stealth Fighter portrayed in the game is based on a 1982 model kit by Testors. The kit caused a certain amount of controversy at the time; although the design was no more accurate than Craig Thomas' Firefox, the stealth programme was supposed to be top secret, and the US senate - not knowing what the real F-117 looked like - assumed that Testors had been given access to sensitive information. As noted below, Microprose's simulation was overtaken by events.

Game worlds At least in the DOS version it is possible to copy Middle East and Vietnam game worlds from F-15 Strike Eagle II to F-19 Stealth Fighter directory and switch two of the original worlds with these, so that you can fly in these worlds. The names of the game worlds replaced are still the original ones in the theater selection menu, however, so you must remember yourself which worlds you replaced. Make sure to back up the original worlds before doing this trick.

Gulf war Ironically, the 'Limited War' level of the Persian Gulf campaign in the game involved the US helping Iraq against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war, including protecting 'friendly' vessels sailing out of Basra (particularly oil tankers) from attack by Iranian missile boats and planes. In the wake of the Operation Desert Storm two years later, the Iraqis in the game's sequel F-117A Nighthawk Stealth Fighter 2.0 were no longer the allied nation that they had been in the original game, and the new game included a Desert Storm campaign.

Hint book Compute! books published a full handbook to help you play this game. It helped you develop a strategy and avoid being detected.

Sid Meier Sid Meier on F-19 Stealth Fighter:

F-19 was the last flight simulator that I wrote. I felt that it was everything I knew about how to write a flight simulator, and I never felt the need to write another one after that. That didn't mean that Bill [Stealey] didn't keep asking me to write them, though.

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