Flying Nightmares.

I had a nightmare once.

I dreamt a man named Tramiel had dug his way out of the New Mexico desert and was releasing a new games console: Jaguar Too – code named “Prescot”. The vision continued. A blue hedgehog was stood outside of Maplins buying up everything it could see in a panic. My dream then switched to me being chased by a mad Japanese guy called Ken – he was clutching a giant crabs claw, he kept yelling ‘Massive damage!’ I ran away.

As I ran I saw a dozy looking guy in red dungaree’s, he was undoing his fly – I stopped and asked him ‘What are you doing!?’ he said he needed to go pee-pee. I said you can’t say that – you’re too old for that sort of phrase. He said he would think of something else.

I ran on.

Past a slight man with bad blond haircut – he was bashing away at beetle with a sledge-hammer, but the beetle wasn’t dying. He turned to me and said “Won’t you think of the children?” he looked earnest but I asked him about the bug, he said eventually he would just ignore it as it posed no threat to security.

I became troubled. Worried. Frantic.I tried to phone Trip Hawkins but he kept telling me he was on the phone. So it was up to me to save Interactive Multimedia Entertainment. Me - 3DO kid.

Then I woke up in a cold sweat. Just a dream.

…just a dream.

Flying Nightmares.

A flight simulator. The imaginary world of Flight Simulators is a tremendous world. It is full of rolling landscapes, freedom, poetical swoops and dives and dramatic flybys. Power plunges towards the ground. Hunting like a trained killer your prey. Then an elegant mid-air pirouette, two missiles later your quarry plunges to his death in a trail of blackened smoke. Victory never tasted sweeter. Of cause, that is the imaginary world.

The real world of flight simulators is an entire rainforest of paper. Twittering on about pitch and yaw and flaps. And so many different types of brakes it’s unhealthy. Next time someone is planning on making a flight simulator I may just pop-in to make sure that they, just like Domark did with Flying Nightmares on the 3DO, don’t get all anal about brakes.

There is just one aircraft in Flying Nightmares – The Harrier jump-jet. A fine British aircraft that in its day was terribly good at slaughtering Johnny Foreigner where-ever and when-ever they stepped out of line. It looked like fun, hovering there in a jump jet, ready to rise majestically above the tree line to waste the fuzzy-wuzzies.

This too is probably better left in your minds eye. The reality may also be fun. Sadly the simulation is painful. Especially sat clutching the badly conceived 3DO joypad. Although owners of the 3DO flight stick claim to enjoy this game more.

The graphics are OK, the sound is OK. The handling, once I managed to actually take-off, seemed OK. I never managed to kill anything. I kept grabbing the quick reference card to remind myself how to launch a missile but all I ever managed to launch was a small sigh of exasperation. As the microscopic grey pixel representing the enemy aircraft zipped away – unhindered so it seemed to me at least, by real world physics.

I spent sometime enjoying looking at my aircraft from the outside thanks to the external cam.

If you like classic flight simulators from the early 1990’s this may well be for you. If you enjoy polygon deficient aircraft carriers, texture-less oceans and fast moving single grey pixels representing enemy aircraft and more braking systems than kwik-fit - then hey – enjoy it. I’m reliably informed Flying Nightmares is one of the best.

You see - patience is a virtue. With this virtue it seems possible to extract a fun game from Flying Nightmare. I sadly have not been bestowed with said virtue and therefore thought it sucked.

The answer to the question to which you are pondering I’m sure concerns rareness. For which I bestow Flying Nightmares with a medium score on the rare-o-meter.

3DO Kid.