For the most part I am really not a fan of games that require more than one person to play. Games tend to get downloaded and then they get a very short amount of time to dazzle me and prove they are worthy to remain on my hard drive. I manage my hard drive a bit like a tyrannical Emperor sometimes and if the little programs in my kingdom don't please me then they are escorted to that most feared of places in my tiny computer empire, the trashcan. Many programs do not even make it that far, especially the multi-player game with no solo play feature. When I need a game fix, I really don't want to have to go lugging off and find someone to play it with to see if its worth getting involved with. Yet the other day I found a game that was so much fun in all its silliness that I saved it and waited for some players to come along.

The game is a goofy little AMOS written program by the name of DOGFIGHT v1.1, written by Richard Ling from Australia. Its a 2 player (PAL only) action game where each player gets a never ending supply of biplanes that he must use to pummel the other player into the cold, hard ground with. The game is split screen, with each player starting at their own end of the "world" and the game becomes single screen whenever the planes occupy the same area of the playing field. Your plane starts on a little runway near its home hangar and anti-aircraft gun near the base of a steep cliff. One player represents the German forces, the other English. The object of the game is to destroy the opponents assorted stuff (plane, base, etc). This is not a serious flight simulator packed with 1000+ buttons and whistles to memorize to fly this little guy, as a matter of fact, you have five choices. You can spin your plane clockwise or counter-clockwise, accelerate, fire your cannon, or drop bombs. Very Simple.

At first controlling the little bugger can be pretty hairy. You must take off down the runway and pull up enough to clear the big pine tree that was foolishly planted RIGHT at the end of each player's runway, but not so much that you stall the plane. Beginners to the game will probably destroy several dozen planes before successfully getting the little rascals off the ground. The plane crashes are so funny and so NUMEROUS that most players have a tendency to lose a few more when laughing like a loon over the crashes. Landing the plane is even simpler. It can't be done, so you don't need to worry about it. Again, very simple.

There are a few tweak-able options that can be set in the game. You may set your airborne instrument of doom to auto-accelerate, which is all you are gonna do with the thing anyway. This can really help beginners take off clear of that #@#!*&%# tree at the end of the runway. You can set whether there are air to air collisions or not, as well as unlimited bombs as opposed to two per plane. Finally you set whether there is a maximum altitude or not, with planes zipping off the top of the screen and out of sight, only to come auguring in at an alarming rate when the player eventually stalls it.

And thus the game goes on. Things that get destroyed are quickly rebuilt and placed in harms way once again. Each player has a computer controlled zeppelin and submarine which appear at random and make things difficult as you try and zip your little airborne menace around the sky. Scoring is very simple. You get one point for the enemy plane and 2 points for everything else, from Anti-aircraft gun to Zeppelin. But if a player destroys his own forces or crashes his own plane, the other player gets the points. This happens more than you might think.

There is really no music in the game, but the sound and the graphics are top notch. The scenery is nicely drawn and adds to the feel of the actual landscape. About the only problem I have with this game is that there is no sense of any ending. The game just goes on and on and the points just keep on piling up and there is really no end other than the 2 players playing to a predetermined score. It would be nice if in future versions if there was SOMETHING that signaled the end of a game and what player has won. But since the only thing the author asks for as payment for this game is a postcard or an e-mail, this is a very minor beef.

I have always been a sucker for any game at all that has a World War I air combat theme to it. The one that comes to most people's mind's is the fantastic Cinemaware game WINGS, which to this day is still my number one Amiga game of all time. While this game is no WINGS, it certainly is alot of fun and I highly recommend it. The biggest difference in this game is that, unlike most games, its almost more fun to crash than it is to win. Happy auguring

Dr. Torgo