Previous Next

The year is 1918 and the Great War is entering its final bloody stages. But it hasn't been too bad for you, because you spend your time high above the muddy unpleasantness of the trenches in a biplane. Yes, it's not such a miserable life in the Royal Flying Corps. Especially as you only have to worry about flying around in two dimensions. The Blue Baron, you see, is what we in magazine-land call a "sideways-scroller". So bang goes any chance of a mega-realistic Sopwith sim.

But fret not. It's still rather a lot of fun. What you have to do is get a mission briefing (which generally consists of two words like 'target bridge'). So get into your little (and it is rather little) biplane and chug off towards, er, the left. As you open fire and destroy the other planes in the sky, it will soon dawn on you that they leave weird little collectables behind them, which fall towards the ground. If you can swipe these, you'll earn yourself extra fuel, machine-gun bullets, bombs and repairs to your plane (this didn't happen in real life).

After a minute or two of flying over some rather cute little landscapes, you'll arrive at the target. Simply dive over it, reduce the speed and hit the space bar. With any luck you'll totally wipe out the bridge, fort, lake or whatever it is you've flown all that way to destroy. Then it's time to head back to your base. Don't relax, though, because the air is filled with other planes intent on ramming you and balloons floating stupidly around, not intent on anything much apart from getting in your way.

The Blue Baron isn't a particularly sophisticated game, but possibly because of this, once you start playing, you know you should be able to beat it, so you keep going. The biplane is responsive and the action occurs at a pretty respectable rate, so you won't get too hacked off if you play for quite a while. And its a toughie, too. You get better as you learn where the enemy planes are attacking from, but you've got to keep moving and firing if you're going to stand any chance of getting over the target, dropping the bomb and successfully returning.

There are twelve missions, some requiring two hits on the main target. You need to land at a friendly airfield to reload and get your plane fixed for these double missions, thus providing you with more of a challenge (and almost certain death unless you have really mastered the game).

The fabled Blue Baron fellow doesn't actually make an appearance in the game, which is odd but, apart from that, it's not bad. Don't expect anything new or inspiring, but if you're into a bit of quick joystick work and the odd machine-gunning, it might do you a treat.

1. It's easy to get into so you don't have to worry about anything too complicated.
2. Twelve missions should keep you playing for many an hour.
3. You can go in any direction and at any speed, making the game more flexible.
4. Two-player option works in turns like an arcade game.
5. Loads of collectables and friendly airfields where you can have repairs.
6. Rather jolly music.

1. It's a bit samey, with twelve very similar missions to fly.
2. Doesn't exactly push the C64's capabilities to uncharted heights.
3. Frustration can build up, causing serious nervous overload.