DOS Days

Janes Combat Simulations: AH-64D Longbow

Released: May 1996
Published by: Electronic Arts
Developed by: ORIGIN Systems
Author(s): Andy Hollis, Will McBurnett, Donovan Keithley, Tsuyoshi Kawahito, Steven Muchow, Christopher Norden, Wendy White, Gary McElhaney, Carol Roberts, Brian G. Smith, Paul Stankiewicz, Chris Yesh, Barry Leitch, Kevin Kushner, Jeremy Dombroski, Mike Francis, Robert Irving, Vincent Lin

Introduction

Janes Combat Simulations: AH-64D Longbow is a helicopter flight simulation based on the adapted version of the original AH-64A military attack helicopter. Developed by ORIGIN Systems and published by Electronic Arts in 1996, it was the second game in their Janes Combat Simulations series.

Featuring around 200 missions in the Single Mission menu, plus a number of ones taken from Operation: Desert Storm and Operation Just Cause, these take you to various theatres of war including the Baltics, Iraq, and Panama.

In many missions you will have a wingman with whom you will be in communication. In addition you can call in airstrikes or artillery strikes on a target.

The flight model is about as accurate as you would expect, having been based on Janes Information Group data as well as from McDonnell-Douglas themselves.

ORIGIN Systems wrote a brand new graphics engine for AH64D Longbow, and at the time of release no other helicopter simulation came close to matching its visual appeal.

An expansion was released a year later called Flashpoint Korea. This upped the ante, giving you a new theatre of war, plus enhancements such as Data Linking targets, the ability to shutdown each engine individually, manually activate the fire extinguisher, set the burst rate of the 30mm cannon.

One key thing missing from the initial release of AH64D Longbow was a multiplayer facility, though it was developed with multiplayer capability in mind.

AH64D Longbow Gold was released in 199x and included both the original game and the Flashpoint Korea expansion pack. It also natively supported running in either DOS or Windows 95. The latest official patch for LBG is 1.04F.

 

System Requirements

System Requirements Intel Pentium 66 MHz CPU, 16 MB RAM, 70 MB free hard disk space.
Recommended: Pentium 166 or 200 MHz, 32 MB RAM, VESA 2.0 PCI graphics card, 16-bit audio sound card, joystick/throttle/pedals.
Graphics support: VGA, VESA SVGA
Audio support: Sound Blaster/Pro/16/AWE32, Ensoniq SoundScape, Pro Audio Spectrum, Gravis UltraSound/ACE/MAX, Roland RAP-10
Peripherals: Thrustmaster FCS/WCS/RCS.
Original Media Two CD-ROM discs
Installed Size (MB) 73 MB (Longbow), or 100 MB (Longbow Gold)


From where can it be run?

Longbow must be installed to your hard disk. There are several options during installation, based on hard disk space.

 

Copy Protection

AH64 Longbow does not have any copy protection.

 

How to Setup

 

 

 

 

Problems

Symptom:
Cause:
Resolution:

Keys

 

To Quit the Game

 

Supporting Documents

 

Additional Files, Drivers & Utilities

 

Save Games

 

Versions of the game known to exist

Version Date Comments
1.0 1996 Initial public release.


Original Floppy Disk Contents

The discs have no specific volume label. Here are each disc's contents:

    Disc 1 of 2 (CD-ROM):

     
                    
    Directory of D:\

     

    Disk 2 of 2 (CD-ROM):

     
                    
    Directory of D:\
     
                                                

 

Installed Directory Contents

Once installed, the following directory structure exists in the game directory:

     

     
                    
    Directory of C:\LONGBOW
     


Screenshots