Fighter Duel
DOS - 1995
Description of Fighter Duel
Strategy Plus says it all about this fun dogfighting underdog: "Fighter Duel is an excellent first person stand alone and modem play PC world War II dogfighting simulator.
It runs liquid smoothly (except very close to the ground) in gorgeous SVGA on its designated minimum machine (a 486/33). It models seven World War II fighters and variants, equaling 13 total, including the Mustang, Corsair, Spitfire, Zero and German fighters. Finally, Battle of Britain airplanes are modeled after a long six year wait.
In my opinion, as a pilot who has flown the TF51D Mustang and Spitfire in real life aerobatics, Fighter Duel has the most accurate feel on the market. Of all the planes I have personally flown, "heavy iron" (World War II warbirds) have a unique heavy, slow motion, soaring feeling in vertical maneuvers combined with solid, sensitive controls in the horizontal plane. Nothing yet accurately touches this feel except Fighter Duel. It has a "full force" flight model with torque, inertia, stability differences, correctly-modeled 90 degree oscillating spins (a first), negative g engine cut out (another first), stall buffeting, etc.
A large, photo-realistic fully working World War II instrument panel dominates the atmosphere in front of you (a first). It quivers when you fire your superb sounding guns, has engine instrument needles, and others, that correctly jump and bounce, a working needle and ball, the first truly correct WW2 artificial horizon, and a unique engine sound which envelops you in "heavy iron" atmosphere.
The stand-alone options are reminiscent of Chuck Yeager's Air Combat (without the missions), to let you explore the capabilities of your historic mounts. You can choose to fight up to eight different computer opponents from eight different starting scenarios. You can choose altitudes, fuel levels, cloud options and the level of artificial intelligence.
An arcade mode ("quick flight") is easy to get into with a quick click of a button and is loads of fun. The modem play works well and without problems. Sequential screens lead you logically from one option to another as you set up your computer and prepare to duel. You need at least a 9600 baud modem to play modem. Different start options allow user setup choices or random starting positions... what a blast!
There are a few minor drawbacks to this excellent program. Fighter Duel contains only one Mustang instrument panel without framing or gunsight (a gunsight reticle exists, however). Some players might be bothered by this, but the sole instrument panel is so realistic that having only one is not so bad (though more in the future would be appreciated). Distance of enemy fighters is, however, hard to judge.
The addition of set missions, careers and controllable wingmen would add more playability. The ground graphics are limited, with only sea and islands, and slow up when you get near the ground. Flight simulator grognards will notice that fighters do not get slow in roll at high speeds, as they should. Correct low speed handling characteristics are virtually ignored as well.
Do these problems kill Fighter Duel? Hardly. It is just too exciting as it stands. It's the perfect modem game, in many ways - little overhead and great action."
If you’re in the mood for a quick duel with computer opponents or a friend, Fighter Duel is a good choice.
Review By HOTUD
External links
Captures and Snapshots
Comments and reviews
Sallow 2023-02-04 0 point
Just found out some more problems (and solutions) with this game.
I've recently started using DOSBox-X, because of its ability to use 8GB virtual hard drives. This is the first game I've seen that ONLY works when it's located on the host drive, and NOT in the VHD. I even got the ISO from Putin and made a minimal installation. Same... didn't work on the VHD, works just fine in the shared folder on the host.
On the VHD it says the standard (false) 2GB left, on the host it states correctly 35GB left.
X 2022-08-09 0 point
I had problems getting it to work at first, but I did after a while. You have to mount the folder with the flags -t cdrom like
mount D C:\Fighter-Duel_DOS_EN -t cdrom
and mount C wherever you want then install it from the FD.exe inside of the fduel folder, and whenever you want to run it just mount both of those drive letters the same way again
KC 2018-05-15 0 point
I can not get the game to work. I load the game into Boxer with no problem. When trying to play the game I get a "You must start the installation from the CD-ROM drive. Please change drive to the CD_ROM, example: D:" I am sure there must be a way around this, but do not know what that might be.
Joe Mama 2017-03-18 1 point
I downloaded this version and loaded it under DOSBox and it works great. I don't know why the CD-ROM version I have doesn't want to run in DOSBox.
Joe Mama 2017-03-16 0 point
I had Fighter Duel on CD-ROM and it worked OK on my older computers, but it says it needs real DOS and won't run under DOSBox. Does this download version run OK under DOSBox? Guess I'll have to download and see.
greydog 2012-01-10 1 point DOS version
I had Fighter Duel when my kids were small. We used to play against each other on separate computers using a null modem cable. At the time, graphics of Fighter Duel were pretty good. Flight model was a little soft but still, one of the best I had at the time. It also had the best explosion graphics for combat sims. I downloaded Fighter Duel form this site because I'd tossed both my copies of this game a few years ago. I downloaded fighter-duel.zip then extracted. I took all the files in the FDUEL folder and created an iso through linux terminal. I took the iso, mounted it in dosbox then installed. Game runs great, sound great, Microsoft Sidewinder 2 usb joystick works great. Thanks for making this DOS game available.
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