Flight-Simulator Overkill

Can a simulation be so realistic, detailed and complicated that it requires more work than a game should?

Three-Sixty’s “MegaFortress” comes close. Tom Clancy fans, wanna-be Top Guns and other assorted technonerds will probably consider this the greatest thing since Desert Storm.

For the rest of us, however, “MegaFortress” is strictly SDI, Strategic Defense Intimidation.

Based on author Dale Brown’s thriller “Flight of the Old Dog,” this technically very sophisticated game takes place on the flight deck of a souped-up, stealthed-out B-52 with an enormous bomb payload.

Depending on which scenario you play, you will be dropping your bombs on a training mission over a Nevada air base, one of 14 bombing runs on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or on a super-secret assignment to knock out a Soviet base on the Kamchatka Peninsula. The game makers promise other scenarios in the future.

But what sets “MegaFortress” apart from other flight simulators are the five different roles that you must master if you want to successfully penetrate enemy territory, bomb them to smithereens and get home in one piece.

There is the role of pilot, of course, but the crew also includes a co-pilot, navigator, weapons officer and electronic warfare officer. You play them all, simultaneously. And each character has plenty to do.

Too much, in our opinion, for one person to do. Or at least too much for someone with a life away from the keyboard.

MegaFortress

Rating: ***

IBM and compatibles; 256-color VGA and 640K RAM required; mouse recommended. List: $49.95.

Computer games are rated on a five-star system, from one star for poor to five for excellent.