I think the modern term multiplayer is different from the 1990s term of multiplayer. In today's gaming world it means playing with others AND also multi-crew/multi-team/multi-station/co-op like SteelBeasts or HMS Marulken. Back in the 1990s, you could link up two machines with a physical null modem cable and fly head-to-head with your friend. The drawback is that you needed 2 computers in the same room, within 2 feet of each other! This was true of Spectrum Holobyte's Flight Of The Intruder.
I have never used the multiplayer feature of Tornado which went one step further than null-modem, using an IP address connection. Something that Flanker 1.0 and Flanker 1.5 used. Also, in the 1990s, the speed of dial-up Internet was excruciatingly slow, compared to the insane Mbps speeds these days. So the multiplayer feature of Tornado was limited to duplex flow of data allowed by the Internet access speeds of the day.
Here's what Rob "Bomber" Henderson said about Tornado's multiplayer curtesy of
Migman's review of Tornado:
The actual Tornado, although not a complete sloth, isn't the hottest of dogfighters ( even F-4's can run circles around them! ) but with a bit of battle damage it really made your life hard. The game also featured a multi-player option, which was perhaps the weakest point of the whole sim.
You could only do head-to-head combat in the Tornado ADV using only Skyflash, Sidewinder and cannon. It was such a shame that the two man aspect of the Tornado wasn't developed for the 2 player option, with one player as the pilot and the other as the navigator, then have the ability to fly in the campaign mode.
The complexity of both cockpits and associated systems plus the intensity of the actual combat missions would have made this, without doubt, the most thrilling 2 player set up ever. Perhaps it's time Digital Integration did an update on the game and brought it upto 2002 standards? If they could do co-operative multiplay as in pilot / nav, they would definitely have one customer here!
So Rob wished that Tornado could allow two friends to pay co-op. One person playing the pilot's role and another playing the navigator's role. Erm... like the two Johns. He hit the nail on the head when he said that if this were achieved, it would be the "most thrilling 2 player set up ever". And we know how thrilling multi-crew and co-op SteelBeasts is!
Now that the assembly language source code is available, can Tornado be updated to grant Rob's 2002 wish?