Except the events depicted in the games single-player campaign are far more destructive with Warthogs blasting away at Russian tank columns.

The low-flying beast is Americas main dedicated ground-attack jet heavily armored and packing an arsenal of missiles, bombs and a 30-millimeter rotary cannon that spews exploding shells.

Designs that know what they are and what theyre trying to accomplish make for successful designs.

Here is a non-exhaustive account with some of the best, and some not-so-good ones added for balance.

It mostly relies on 3D polygons for its low-res graphics, which were typical for flight sims of the era.

Aimed more for the casual gamer, flight sim geeks will likely see it as a novelty due to its simple mechanics.

Its worth playing as a retro look back at early combat flight sims, and your best chance is finding a semi-legal copy on an abandonware site.

Apple was struggling and Microsoft was nearing its release of Windows 95.

More to the point, Parsoft stood athwart some of the gaming trends at the time, and produced an excellent sim because of it.

But as improvements in technology accelerated, including computer-melting 3D accelerated graphics, developers faced a dilemma.

More processing power for better graphics meant gameplay sometimes suffered.

To get a sense of what all this looks like on the screen, see this overview (embedded above) from the YouTube channel SiliconClassics.

The downside is that there are fewer missions and poor documentation which for 1990s flight sims is almost unforgivable.

If youre on a PC and want to experience Parsofts physics while blowing up polygon tanks, then this game is for you.

Its an open question as to which side history has favored more.

But Silent Hunter: A-10 Tank Killer II falls squarely on the latter side.

Moving further away from the Cold War, Silent Thunder features a three-part campaign set in Colombia, the Persian Gulf and South Korea.

While 3D acceleration looked new and delightful at the time, it doesnt have the nostalgia factor of A-10 Attack and its polygons, which also had far better gameplay.

If youre not aiming for realism, dont bother with trying to make it look realistic.

This 1994 title by Japanese developer Opus for the Super Nintendo knows exactly what it is a game where the player zooms around in a tiny A-10 Warthog or F-15 Strike Eagle while blowing up as many baddies as possible.

But by the late 1990s, competition from innovative first-person shooters and strategy games among others collapsed the market.

Its not a stretch to suggest that LOMAC helped save the genre for its dedicated, core fans.

It could be a warning that an enemy MiG is about to shoot you down.

To stand any chance of using the A-10 effectively means mastering the AGM-65 air-to-surface missiles multi-functional display.

Computer Games For Mac 1990S