Black Knight: Marine Strike Fighter • Training 1/2 (SE Software 1995)

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damsonn

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Published on July 19, 2021 3:09:37 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h8GrCtlzjg

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The Black Knight (2018)

Duration: 25:25

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Black Knight: Marine Strike Fighter was developed by SE Software and published by FormGen for DOS in 1995. It features F/A-18 Hornet in which you could partake in 50 different combat missions, 8 training missions as well as a free flight mode. A built-in mission creator is also available. Notable features included a flight instructor mode which offered instructions at every key point of flight or combat (which after a while became pretty annoying, you can turn this option off at any point), flight recorder to play back your flight viewed from various angles and digitized engine and cockpit sounds from actual F/A-18 Hornets.

Graphics were clearly inspired by Digital Integration's Tornado (with some Gouraud shading added). Flight modelling wasn't stellar, but for 1995 it did alright. One cool feature was the ability to import your own music to listen to during flight. The game supported built-in midi tracks conposed by none other than Bobby Prince (if you played Commander Keen, Rise of the Triad or DOOM you might hear the resemblance), on top of that it supported mod files, those you could import. Since tracker music scene was pretty big at the time, you probably had a ton of favorite mods you could dump into the game.

Gameplay was pretty simplistic, with really basically non-existent briefings, planning or even arming. There was only a small array of ground and air targets for you to destroy. You could be accompanied by a wingman on some missions, whose help was often needed. Avionics were also rudimentary - very simple A/A radar, RWR and no A/G radar modes. All those shortcomings could be rectified as the game was suppose to get a sequel in form of Windows version with higher res textured graphics but it was never released. You can see the promotional video of it here:
https://youtu.be/2tMekYIoRVA

Few pointers on getting it to run on DOSBox:
The installer is broken, it will not let you install the game because of reporting negative value of free space on your hard disk. Limiting the size with "-freesize x" switch for mounting command in dosbox.conf will not help. Apparently the installer on the CD has a bug with hard drives that have a 32K or larger cluster size. Simple workaround is to copy all files from CD to your harddrive, you will have to manually create a file named FIPATH.DAT or you will get an error (you can do it with notepad, put the game path inside, i.e. " C:\BK\ ". Or you can install 1.33 patch which I archived here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PyNcgXEKkIJriWRk1Yxn3_NuS2ezi0bG/view?usp=sharing
It has fixed install program that will report disk size correctly. Patch also fixes some joystick issues and adds other gameplay related things.

Black Knight Marine Strike Fighter playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIku_oD9y-RBzOxfGHnuUJdVTk7RHO3Pq

0:00 Intro
1:11 Main menu
2:02 Training 1: Take-off / Waypoints / Landing
10:20 Training 2: Air Combat / AIM-7M Sparrow
15:03 Training 3: Air Combat / AIM-9M Sidewinder
19:00 Training 4: Air Combat / M-61A1 Vulcan
24:48 High Scores and Credits Screens

#RetroFlightSims

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