Just caught the end of Iron Eagle on TV, it’s about as much of a cheesy unrealistic ’80s action flick as ya can get. But it is the only decent cheesy action flick with lots of air action that I now of >_>.

The whole jist of the movie is a kid skipping town with a pair of USAF F-16s to rescue his father, and ending up single handly saving the day while dancing beteen AAA and MiGs, although how any one could call those things MiGs without being drunk, is totally beyond me. Those airframes just screen Dassault Mirage! The movies never the less enjoyable, as long as one can forget a few bits of reality, kick back and relax that is.

It reminds me that I’ve never really found a flight simulation that I like. Everyone that I’ve ever played, either boils down to being to arcade like, not my bag, or proves that a keyboard and joystick are a poor substitute for a real aircrafts cockpit lol. I like flight sims but they don’t like me I guess :. I’ve never really had much taste for modern missile based combat either, just a gun-fighter at heart I guess… And I have *never* found a flight sim game that had an AI that could really dog fight, get past the missles and they are just toast. Although it’s a very arcade-like game, Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere was actually quite fun, just wish I had a Japanese copy of it… Most particularly the mission where one has to fly in hot pursuit of the X-49 Night Raven through a tunnel system, leading the player into a later level where one duals the ultra-nimble aircraft inside the caverns below.

The fun part of course is getting through the level at high speed without crashing, then moving on to shoot it out with the Night Raven for an A ;-). The occasional duals with the UI-4054 Aurora, looks like one of our spyplanes but flies like a jetfighter from hell lol. Some of the few times that the computers proven to be a challenge I guess :. I eventually gave up on flight sims in general, do to lack of anything fun that didn’t go to either extreme (the arcade Vs where is my simpod problem). Hmm, before I quit though I remember when one of the console based flight sims came out, more realistic then most consolers but still to arcadey for my tastes. When my brother watched me fly one of the attack fighter missions, he described me as a lethal S.O.B. while I was making waves, crazy wall crawling spider at work xD. But it’s been *years* since I’ve actually played any flight-based games seriously.

If I ever found a game that I could enjoy and not dislike, maybe I’d get back into flight simulations someday. But none just seem to strike a good balance :. And I flibbin’ hate air-to-air missiles! In a lot of ways, I think the truest forms of air combat began dying out after World War II, disappearing into the post Vietnam era… Where a pilots skill is as important then his technology, if not even more so. Who knows, maybe technology will one day return fighter pilots to more dog fighting, less ground attack jobs.

Either way, I’m not likely to ever fly let along get a pilots license, and my Dream Girl is already retired anyway.