I’ve always known subLOGIC and Bruce Artwick for their work on bringing Flight Simulator into the world — but I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that they produced one of the most impressively accurate (and customisable) pinball sims of the 8-bit era, too.
Night Mission Pinball may seem simple and straightforward on paper, since it only features a single table, but the depth of simulation on offer — plus the commitment to recreating the physicality of pinball on original hardware — is impressive stuff, particularly when you start delving into the highly tweakable “fix” mode.
Flight Simulator II from subLOGIC was an important piece of software for our family. Not only was it a “game” that my father enjoyed (though he continues to insist to this day that it is “not a game”) but it also directly or indirectly kickstarted the writing careers of three Davisons.
Yes, indeed, after my Dad had his enthusiastic praise of both the Atari 8-bit and ST versions of Flight Simulator II published in the UK’s Page 6 magazine, both my brother and, much later, I started contributing articles to the publication. My brother is, at the time of writing, a person of considerable importance over at IGN and I, well, I get paid to write about cute anime girls. And we can trace all that back to Flight Simulator II!
