As we can read on Wikipedia, Charles Elwood “Chuck” Yeager (born 1923) is a noted test pilot. He is widely considered to be the first pilot to travel faster than sound and his career began in World War II as a private in the United States Army Air Forces. In 1991 Electronic Arts published Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat for PC, an aircraft simulation in which Chuck Yeager was a technical consultant in the game and his digitized voice is featured in the game, giving encouragement and praises before and after missions.
A NES game featuring Chuck Yeager, titled “Chuck Yeager’s Fighter Combat” was also in the works for the Nintendo Entertainment System, but it was never released for unknown reasons. In May 2010, mrmark0673 and BeaglePuss were able to buy a prototype of Chuck Yeager’s Fighter Combat NES from an eBay auction and shared many screenshots of the game. Chuck Yeager’s Fighter Combat will
As BeaglePuss and mrmark0673 wrote in the Nintendo AGE Forum:
This game is fantastic!. It’s extremely involved for an NES game. There are two selectable training options and two gameplay options including a two player game where Player one flies the jet and Player two is in charge of artillery. There are four weapons (including remote missiles that the player take control of to seek out long range targets), tons of baddies (Planes, helicopters, tanks, etc), awesome pseudo 3-D effects (Think 8-bit Star Fox), well developed story line, tons of in-game options (multiple camera angles), and some of the most ridiculous digitized voice overs of all time. Not only is the voice fantastic, but Yeager’s disembodied head appears on screen every time another one liner is shared.
The two things that continue to stand out for me are:
– The digital voices. Every five seconds, Chuck says something bizarre like “Engage!” or “Out of Missiles” and my favorite “You call yourself a pilot?!”
– The “polygon” graphics that I never thought I’d see on the NES. For the hardware, I can’t believe they can pull it off. Sure, it’s primitive next to something like Starfox, but not bad at all for the NES.
The game will be released (Cart and box) for less than $60 shipped. If that doesn’t interest you as a collector, you could always wait until the initial sale is over and play the rom for free. As always, huge props to mrmark0673 and BeaglePuss!
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