Flying Circus Mac Review (1998)

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From the archive: this review first ran on the Mac Gaming Alliance (MGA), the Mac games site that lived here on DimensionZ in the late 1990s. It was published September 1998 and is reproduced as originally written, with the original screenshots (click to enlarge). More in the Mac Gaming Alliance archive.

Flying Circus is one of only two flight simulators available for the Macintosh that supports 3D hardware acceleration. Flying Circus is described as “Seat of the pants flying” with “no huge manual to get through” and “no weapons systems to memorize”.

Gameplay

Flying Circus lives up to it’s hype with fly by the seat of your pants gameplay style and simplistic controls. Unlike most modern flightsims which require the memorization of countless commands, FC is simply a fun flying game. With input sprocket you can use almost any joystick out there. It is basically point and shoot mindless flying.

There are four different aircraft to fly in FC: Sopwith Camel, S.E. 5a, Fokker Triplane, and Fokker D-VII. Each has it’s own cockpit graphics and flying style. One thing I did find annoying is the completely unrealistic physics, I was able to do a complete loop in each plane and also fly inverted for extended periods of time. The world in FC I found to be rather sparse, containing almost no civilian structures or background objects.

FC comes with only 20 missions, but also includes a mission editor to create countless more of your own, giving you almost unlimited replayability. The 20 included missions offer a wide variety of play.

Graphics and Sound

Being a 3D accelerated title, I was expecting graphics to rival that of at least Quake. I was sorely disappointed in the graphics in FC. Although when run with a 3D card the graphics are somewhat smooth, there are many jaggies and are no where near the quality of even Quake. The objects in the game seemed to lack color, most being only one shade. Balloons being the most annoying, they look like clouds when you see them in the distance. I would have hoped for a wider variety of color in FC.

There were very few sounds in FC, a lot of the sounds are recycled over and over again in different parts. There seemed to only be two or three different engine sounds, and all the guns sounded exactly alike. It also would have added a much needed atmosphere had there been more background music.

Interface and Difficulty

Donald A. Hill, the force behind FC, is a long-time Mac programmer and knows his stuff. All the expected Mac interface and dialogue boxes are present and the mini-manual built in to the game is a great feature.

The level of difficulty in FC seems very unbalanced in favor of the computer AI planes. Shots fired by me seem to do very little damage compared to when the AI planes hit me. Some of the later missions I found extraordinarily difficult.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Flying Circus is game with many faults, but it is still a fun game. I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone looking for knock out graphics or the most in realism. The game is more suited to the novice flight enthusiast. Flying Circus has really wetted my appetite to see what Donald A. Hill and Bullseye Software bring out next!

Find a copy

Flying Circus has been out of print for years, but used copies of the original Mac release still turn up, and some classics have been re-released for modern systems. Search for Flying Circus on Amazon.

Ratings use the MGA’s original 1–5 apple scale. Prices, system requirements and web links in this review are from the time it was written.