F-15 Strike Eagle III

Carrier and battleship task groups

There are carrier and battleship task groups in each of the campaign maps. The Iowa battle group is near Kuwait on the Desert Storm map, as are two other carrier groups. Without the version 4108.03 patch, flying near a task group will cause the game to hang.

CD version

Because of the additional intro, the CD version was arguably worse than the floppy release: when you started the game, then a) the CD had to be in the drive and b) the intro would be played. The intro was split into several files. And why? Well, they copied the first intro file to your hard drive, played it back, deleted it, copied the next file, played it back... Not only this behaviour was totally stupid, the intro looked like crap because of the pause (yes, 1x-2x CD-ROM ruled back then) between the animation snippets.

In addition to this, in some CD:s the game crashed when trying to access the Iraq '93 campaign.

(The remedy for this bug is to copy the file \F15\FS\DS.REL from the CD to the installation directory.)

Apart from introduction, CD version also contained History and Tutorial parts. The former was a story about origin of F-15 Strike Eagles aircraft and the latter a sort of encyclopedia explaining all the functions and meaning of each and every element of the pilot's cockpit. Both parts were narrated by female voices and scanned visuals.

Iraq campaign

The version 4108.03 patch added the Iraq '93 campaign, postulating that the Coalition forces, fed up with Iraqi intransigence regarding the UN arms inspections and repeated violations of the no-fly zones, chose to resume limited bombing of specific targets, and the Strike Eagles are called back to duty...

References

If you "slew" over to Tokyo, you'll see Godzilla.

Special Edition

There's a Squadron Leader's Edition that contains a F-15 book, F-15 Squadron patch, and some limited edition F-15 photos in addition to the regular stuff in the box.

Awards

• Power Play
  • Issue 02/1993 – #3 Best Simulation in 1992

Information also contributed by phlux