Falcon 4.0 - The Game Which Refuses to Die

jonerik writes "Today's Boston Globe has this article on the worldwide cult following behind Falcon 4.0, a 1998 flight simulator program which was discontinued by its manufacturer (Hasbro Interactive) the following year. Shortly after it was dropped, someone leaked the game's source code and before you could say 'open source' Falcon 4.0 buffs around the world began fixing bugs in the game and adding new features. Enter Claude Cavanaugh, who approached the current owners of Falcon 4.0 (Atari, which is currently owned by a French company formerly known as Infogrames) with the idea of incorporating the hackers' improvements into Falcon 5.0. Although Falcon 5.0 won't be appearing anytime soon due to financing issues, happily Xicat Interactive will be releasing Falcon 4.0 Gold: Operation Infinite Resolve in April, which will include all of the upgrades originally intended for 5.0."

Comments

Falcon 4 Unified Team

[aurum42]

The Falcon 4 Unified Team released several updates to the original Falcon 4.0, called "Superpaks", and additional theatres (the original game was set in the Korean theatre). The updates range from new textures and flight model improvements, to completely new aircraft and weaponry. An amazing accomplishment, all in all.

Of course, I didn't have the time to go out and equip myself with all the flight sim paraphernalia (rudder pedals, joysticks and so on), so I haven't really had a chance to explore the game in detail, but it looks really fun. I was more used to EF2000 (a EuroFighter 2000 sim from the UK, which was great fun) which had less steep entry requirements, but if I ever find the time to explore simming in detail, Falcon 4 + SP4 would be the way to go - judging from all the comments by real fighter pilots, it's the ultimate flight sim.