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Su-25 Sturmovik was a good flight simulator at the time, and Electronic Arts was known for creating great simulators by this time. This game used polygonal graphics with very few textures, and like most flight simulators at the time it ran well on the PC.
The PC excelled in flight simulators, because Intel processors were superior to Motorola’s 68000 based processors in float point calculations at the time. I played this game on the 386 sx-16 mhzs at the time, and it ran well on that computer. The animations were very smooth, there were no slow downs whatsoever. I became an expert in this game when I first played it in 1990, and I finished the game. There is a beginning and a end to this game unlike LHX Attack Chopper which was also released by Electronic Arts.
The story line of the game is about rogue elements Soviet and U.S. forces who want to start a war. The people behind it are the defense industries that need an excuse to keep them in business. In the game, you will fight both Soviet and U.S. forces. You find this out when you finish the last mission which is giant barge. The only way to destroy it is by dropping very large bombs on it.
When you play the game, you will encounter all kinds of equipment from A-10 Warthogs, Ah-64 Apaches, F-16s, M1A2 tanks, M2 Bradley AIFVs, M113s, F117 Stealth fighters, etc on the American side. On the Soviet side, you will encounter Mi-24 helicopters, BTR-80s, BRDM-2s, T-72s, S60 57mm AA guns, ZSU-23s, Mig-23s, Mig-27s, Mig 29s, BMP2s, etc.
Su-25 was a typical flight simulator of the 1990s, and the early 1990s was a time when many flight simulators were released. Companies, like Microprose, Dynamics, Electronic Arts, Origin Systems, and Spectrum Holobyte lead the way in making flight simulators. They released great times, like F-16 Combat Pilot, LHX Attack Chopper, Falcon 3.0, Strike Commander, Wings of Glory, F-15 Strike Eagle II, Red Baron, A-10 Tank Killer, Flight of the Intruder, Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat, Night Hawk F117A Stealth Fighter 2.0, Aces of the Pacific, Aces over Europe, Harrier Jump Jet, Mig 29, F-15 Strike Eagle III, Falcon Gold, etc. There were many more titles and software companies that made simulator games during the late 1980s to the early 1990s. The early 1990s was the golden age of flight simulators, because no other time in gaming history were so many flight simulators released.
Back in 1990, I bought a copy of this game for about $39.99 at Software, etc. Back in those days, they had free demo floppy disks. I got the free demo first, tried it out and bought the copy later.
The flight model of the game isn’t realistic like modern simulator, but that was due to the limitation in technology at the time. Nor did you get the full flight experience from these early simulators. Never the less, it was a big improvement from simulator or games of the early 1980s!
All in all, you should try this game and try a piece of gaming history.
If you are interested in playing old games like this, you can run it on Dosbox 0.74, PCEM, or 86BOX
Emulators