European Air War

European Air War places the player in the cockpits of World War II fighter planes over the European theater and offers campaigns for several warring sides, including American, British, and German squadrons. The game followed the tradition of historical flight simulators and tried to combine faithful models of period aircraft — like the P-51 Mustang, Spitfire, or Messerschmitt Bf 109 — with a dynamic campaign in which the outcomes of individual missions influenced the further course of the war. Players could choose between a simplified and a fully simulation flight model, which opened the game up to a wider audience as well as to demanding fans of historical simulators. The campaign followed the war's development on the Western Front, so players gradually encountered new aircraft types on both sides of the conflict as the situation changed from year to year. The campaign's dynamic nature meant that the outcomes of individual missions had a real impact on what tasks and enemy forces players would face in subsequent missions.

Visually the game relied on the 3D accelerators of the time and offered extensive, if by today's standards simple, maps of the European battlefield with variable weather and visibility. Engine and onboard weapon sound effects, together with wingmen's voice lines, gave missions a cinematic atmosphere of aerial battles. Historical fidelity of the armament and aircraft was one of the things that earned the game a good reputation among fans of World War II flight simulators, as was its emphasis on formation tactics and cooperation with the rest of the squadron.

European Air War is remembered today as one of the last great World War II flight simulators of the 1990s, one that still managed to come out during an era when this subgenre was very much alive on PC. For today's players, it offers an interesting look into a time when historical flight simulations tried to combine realism with accessibility, and even with today's emulation tools it remains a playable piece of genre history.

Why play it: For lovers of historical flight simulations, it's an interesting look into the end of the golden era of the genre on PC, when realism and accessibility still went hand in hand.