Pearl Harbor

When Pearl Harbor's opening sequence fired up, I felt like I was sitting in a glass cockpit flying in for a medal with zero preparation. This 1988 game from an obscure MS-DOS developer offers no hand-holding — you're in the cockpit, you've got a joystick or keyboard, and you'd better fly.

It's a flight simulator set against the historical Battle of Pearl Harbor. Your machine is an American fighter, and your objective is crystal clear — defend the base or escort aircraft. The graphics are primitive, a mosaic of pixels in monochromatic colors that barely suggest a landscape. Building rooftops are squares, planes look like crosses. If you're used to something like Flight Simulator, the graphical ambitions here will disappoint.

The controls are reasonable though — classic PC flight mechanics without much fuss. You fly, hunt for the Japanese, and shoot. Physics aren't your friend and spatial awareness isn't straightforward. You'll discover that pulling off a simple flight, holding altitude, and aiming at a target all at once isn't a matter of minutes. There's a certain appeal to this archaic defiance — no autopilot, no parking mode, just you and your ungovernable aircraft.

Pearl Harbor lives in memory more as a curiosity than a classic. At a time when flight sims were packing in content and ease-of-use, this game chose a purely pedagogical approach — master it or drown. Today we see it as too harsh, too primitive, and too unforgiving. There's no reason to praise it, but it was played, old-timers remember it, and that's worth noting.

If you want to taste what flying was like in the nineties on PC — here's your chance. You won't be pretty at it, but the frustration will be authentic.