I'm digging into the evolution of sim games, but have very limited knowledge when it comes to flight sims and space sims (which form two of the major subgenres).

Can anyone suggest important games to check out? I'm particularly interested in the ones that are historically significant, as either highly influential or in some way groundbreaking.

I'm aware of Elite, Freelancer, Wing Commander, Conflict: Freespace, Privateer, IL-2 Sturmovik, Flight Simulator, and X-Plane as some of the more highly regarded games, but have little clue what is actually notable in the evolution of the genres.

If anyone knows some good resources for information on these two genres, that'd help too.

Right now, both flight sims and space sims feel near impenetrable.

I'm going to go through my archives here and memory. But off thetop of my head you forgot x-wing and the follow up Tie Fighter. Both set impressive stats and sales at the time as there wasn't much like them in terms of free form space simulation. There are more but it's 3:30am I just woke up for some reason and my books are in another room as are my games.There was also space shuttle on atari hard and boring but it was a stepping stone. I also think Rogue Squadron was the first CD-ROM space flight sim. Even though it was on a set path and all you did was really aim the guns it brought in the CD-ROM era.

X-Wing is the first thing that springs to mind for me when it comes to space sims. I was officially terrible at it but it was pretty good fun.

I would include Rogue Squadron on N64 and Chuck Yeager's Air Combat on PC/MAC for flight sims.

Mechwarrior 2 for walking tank sim should be at least mentioned in any SIM article.

Hard Drivin' and Gran Turismo for driving come to mind.

EDIT
Depending on how liberal you want to be with SIM->
AfterBurner, Spectre, F1 GrandPrix, Daytona USA, Excitebike, F-Zero

Man I could keep this up for a while.

Correction NOT Rogue Squadron it was "REBEL ASSAULT" that was the CD-ROM one that made ground and pushed in space on CD-ROM. It bugged me all day but darn it I got it.

Like others already said, the X-Wing and TIE-Fighter series were pretty big.

Some older stuff, both from Argonaut:
- Starglider (early 3D graphics)
- Star Fox (the first SNES game with the Super FX chip)
- Independence War (bigger ships instead of fighters and with some more realistic physics)

I guess those are the ones I can think of at the moment, but I have to admit that space/flight sims aren't really my forte.

EDIT: I smell another article coming up...
If you want to have a nice piece of trivia for Elite:
Due to memory constraints the galaxies in the original 6502 Elite (first released on the Acorn BBC Micro) used and algorithm to generate all the data on the fly. The Z80 and 68K versions had a different algorithm and thus different galaxies. For the Acorn Archimedes version the creators wanted to have the original galaxies and included a 6502 emulator to use the original code.

Pixelcade wrote:


Aha! Classic games, I remember playing Rebel Assault II to death. Such a basic game but it held my attention for so long. I think the cheat activation was 'thereisnotry'.

I'd suggest checking out Strike Commander (Origin), TFX (DID)) and the Falcon Series (Spectrum Holobyte). Maybe Comanche from Novalogic.
When I talk to friends about classic games, these are the sims that always come up and are remembered most fondly.

And I wouldn't consider Rogue Squadron a "Sim", it's more of an action game. Like Rebel Assault, where you did nothing sim-like, only flying up, down, left right and shooting at things in front of a streaming video.

edit: you should check out Air Warrior. It's an Flightsim MMO from the early 90s with a community that still exists today.
Maybe not that important to the overall flightsim genre, but definitely of high interest to early online gaming.

Thanks for all the responses - they are proving very helpful.

I can't talk right now about what I needed the information for, but all will be revealed in time.

I tended to be horrible, but thematically I did like Descent. Solid iirc story-driven free-flight 3D maze game, just a bit trippy since world orientation could start feeling completely arbitrary...

Also, going waaay back, there were a few titles like Captain Skyhawk (NES) with main games or bonus rounds flown from a mock-3D rear perspective. I also recall F22 Interceptor (Genesis), and I've spotted one or two others in the apparent series, harnessing polygonal 3D on that platform. Had great fun with Star Wars (32X), an apparent console port of an arcade game, although that one may be more obscure.

I love Descent, but it's more of a first-person shooter than space (flight) sim - so I'm not sure whether it counts. It's still relevant, though, I guess, since it spawned Freespace.

I also thought of Descent when I wrote my posting, but then I dropped the idea because I see it more as FPS, too.

But Mungo mentioning Comanche was good. While I've never seen it life it's definitely worth mentioning for its Voxel engine.

That just reminded me of what must be the first real sim I ever loved:
www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/tomahawk


I still want to fly a helicopter cause of this game.

I'm not particularly fond of WW I/II flight sims, but Red Baron was the first one in that subgenre I ever played.
The oldest Mac flight sim I remember playing was Falcon, I guess it was in Black & White.
The A-10 series is also kinda interesting, because you don't get to fly a fighter plane, like in 90% of the combat flight sims out there.
If you're looking for a helicopter combat sim, Comanche and Apache Longbow are certainly the most famous games in that subgenre.

As far as space sims, the only ones I ever played were Wing Commander IV, X-Wing, TIE Fighter and X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, so I can't tell much about them.