Hi JudgeDredd
Gameplay. That's the keyword that makes some games stand the test of time. Tornado's gameplay is tremendous.
I just went back to it the other day using Dosbox. The beauty of this game, and many other games of its era, is that after having learnt the avionics and ordinance commands, once the action starts, it forces you to make decisions just like a real RAF Tornado pilot. Meaning that you have to deal with the terrain, AAA, SAM radar signals, airborne SAMs, waypoints, weapon management, fuel consumption, map, time to target and a hundred and one other things. Oh yeah there is also wing sweep angle and wing flaps management. Even after you leave the target zone, you have to watch out for SAMs and triple-A and enemy CAPs. Flares and chaff launches will save your life. Don't forget to hit that Electronic Countermeasure thingy button.
And all that gameplay from just one stand-alone mission. Throw in mission planning and the gameplay ratchets up several notches higher. Gamers would spend and hour or more planning and crafting multi plane strikes in Tornado, only to fly for 20 to 30 minutes.
The dynamic campaign was truly dynamic, and the game was bug-free - something unheard of now. Tornado was Digital Integration's DOS flight simulation masterpiece, never to be rivaled.
When I look back at the graphics, it's like *yuck* compare to so many games after it. But in the thick of the game, dealing with gameplay elements that force you to make instant decisions and to stay alive, the 1992/1993 polygon graphics don't matter so much. In fact I would go so far as to say that the polygon graphics force your mind to imagine the details. It's like your mind and imagination fills in the gaps and deficiencies of the dour graphics. So in the end, the graphics ain't that bad. Especially when the game models so many things. Like laser guided bombs, loft bombing, runaway bombs like JP322s.
I also love the way the screen shudders to simulate vibration of the airframe. I've played night missions with the lights switched off. So nice. So much power in your hands. All this gameplay for a mere less than 10 megabytes of files. In the end, the outdated polygon graphics can be forgiven. That's my opinion of this classic.
Cheers
Frankie