Genres Combat flight simulator Developers Velocity Development, Mission Studios, Interactive Vision, City Interactive Publishers Velocity Development, Mission Studios, Interplay, TalonSoft, Global Star Software | ||
Jetfighter is a series of 3D combat flight simulator computer games that was developed by started in 1988 by Velocity Development. The player would fly a combat jet aircraft in the skies against enemy forces. The game boasted 3D graphics that were cutting-edge at the time of the game's release, and used real-world terrain. The games seldom sold well because they occupied an uncomfortable middle ground of game design - too much flight simulator for action game fans, as they realistically emulated actual combat aircraft, but too simplistic for the hardcore sim fans, who always preferred games more along the lines of the Falcon series. The series ended after the commercial failure of Jetfighter 2015, which was a fully arcade-style jet shooter without even lip service to realism. The later games had support for 3dfx Voodoo cards to run natively in DOS.
Jetfighter II was produced before the winner of the Advanced Tactical Fighter competition was announced; the programmers chose to emulate the YF-23 "Black Widow II" as the winning aircraft rather than the eventual winner, the YF-22 (which "entered service" in 2004 as the F-22 Raptor).