My BMS Story Begins

 When I was a kid, I wanted nothing more than to be a Fighter Pilot. I collected patches, built model planes, and created an impressive collection of data cards. These cards would have a picture of an aircraft on the front and all the technical specs on the back. I coveted these as though they were sacred texts to my religion. I was also able to convince my parents that Combat Flight simulations were educational and that they were not video games at all. We had a rule that my Sega and later PlayStation were meant for gaming, and the PC was meant for education and work. That lasted about a year.

The Janes collection had a significant impact on my early sim experience. I especially grew to love USNF '97 and later Fighters Anthology. Both games let me fly fighters over Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, and any other historical or current hotspot. A huge library of flyable and AI planes and plenty of mud to move.

One summer, my obsession was taken to new heights. I went to a summer camp in Alabama called Aviation Challenge. It's like Space Camp if you have a kid that wants to kill commies from the cockpit of the best fighter planes the world has ever seen. If fighter planes were my gods, the data cards were my texts, and the camp would be my holy land. For the first time in my life, I met other kids who played flight sims, had trivial knowledge, and had the same autistic passion for manned flight in combat.

It was a great week, but it flew by, and that was simply not enough to quell my hunger for flight. If anything, it just roused my appetite without quite being able to bed it back down. I needed to find a local Squadron like I had during my week away. So I didn't have to wait a year to fly with a group.

Of course, you can find or make a group online, and it's not hard. Recruit friends and randoms, and build your own traditions, missions, experiences, and adventures. However, back in the early-to-mid 1990s, the idea of online gaming was fairly new. In fact, for me, it was not something I did at all. I had heard about this from kids at the camp and loved the idea of flying online with others. I just had no idea where to get started.

I remember a summer when I had just returned from camp and was over at a friend's house. It was pouring rain, and unlike my house's rules, he was allowed to play games on his PC. He had Doom, which was terrific. We were doing God's work, killing demons, taking turns when one of us would die. During one of my friend's turn, I looked at the library in his dad's home office. I noticed a few computer games on the shelf, three of which stood out.

"Oh yeah, my dad has those. I never really played them because he said they are really hard and complicated. I watched him play, and it looked boring."

"Looked boring? These are the F-16 Fighting Falcon, the F-18 Hornet, and the MiG-29 Fulcrum. Three of the most modern and advanced fighter platforms on the planet. You are going to sit there and tell me that looks boring? You have had this for how long without me knowing?"

It was Falcon 3.0, Hornet, and MiG 29, all put out by Spectrum Holobyte in the early 1990s. For their time, it was state-of-the-art and probably one of the most feature-complete flight sims on the market. Inside the boxes were massive manuals, foldable maps and charts, and a very important video: The Art of the Kill.

It was raining, so going outside was out of the question. Doom was great, but by now, I was kind of bored with running through mazes. Both of us had been quite guilty of using cheat codes to extend our playtimes when the other was not paying attention. So, I suggested we give the newfound holy grails of modern air combat simulations a shot. It took some convincing, but I managed to make some progress.

My other buddy who lived nearby stopped by later, and by then, I was already in my element. I was teaching the concepts of BFM using a toy plane taped to a drumstick when he walked in and saw my puppet show.

"The fuck are y'all doing"

We showed him what we were doing, and it didn't take long for him to get involved. We only had one PC, so we would take turns doing training sorties. Eventually, we stepped it up to doing actual missions and turned it into a fictional war. This was a lot of fun, but this was my passion, my love, and my dream, not theirs. Eventually, their interests would evolve, and mine, more or less, just got more entrenched.

Later that summer, some cousins of mine from Virginia came to visit. Since my buddies had lost interest and my friend's dad didn't care, I was now the proud owner of Falcon 3.0 and the expansions. My cousins were around my age, and this time, they brought a couple of friends of theirs. Naturally, I saw this as an opportunity to make Local Squadron 2.0. I will never know if anyone enjoyed it as much as I did because I was too busy loving every moment to notice if anyone else was bored or cared.

I managed to go back to that camp two more times. My final pilgrimage to the holy land of Huntsville, Alabama, was in 1998. I was 15 years old, and by now, I had logged quite a few virtual hours in various combat theaters throughout history. I left the camp with a book titled "The Fighter Pilots' Handbook," which I read cover-to-cover during my flight home. I read it repeatedly, at least a dozen or so more times. I have misplaced that book, and at one point, I looked into getting it again, but after reading recent reviews, it is best to leave that one in the past.

But Trout, isn't this a review of Falcon BMS? Why yes, it is! That was so kind of you to ask.

In 1998, Microporse, Spectrum Holobyte, and Hasbro Interactive released Falcon 4.0. It was everything 3.0 was but with much more fidelity, and it boasted a robust dynamic campaign. The idea of playing the same campaign over and over with different missions and outcomes sounded fantastic, and it was and still is.

Growing up where I was, there were only a handful of options to get PC Games. Wal-Mart was local and carried a few, but this was before our local Wal-Mart became what was once called a "Super Wal-Mart," but we all just call it "Wal-Mart." So, the supply was slow and didn't cater much to flight sim nerds.

The other two options were the two different malls near our area. One was about forty-five minutes away, and the other was a good hour away. You really needed a good reason to go to the mall, and apparently, only I felt it was a good reason to go there to get a game. Of course, I compounded this by not having enough money to buy the game myself, so I was forced to beg.

My pleas went unanswered, and I had to face reality, I had to save my own money, and that really sucks. I made solid arguments that obtained a ride promise should I raise the funds to get the game. I worked part-time at the family golf course, killing bugs and cutting grass. I usually used my money to go watch movies, go out and eat, and go-carts, the holy trinity of a teenage boy. So, it took me almost the entire summer to save up because old habits die hard, and I like to drive fast.

Here is where the story takes a tragic turn. Not once, not twice, but four times, we would go to one or the other area mall. Over the course of several months, we would travel to and from both sets of malls, and I would return empty-handed. Babbage's and Hungate's were my only two options, and they were really letting me down.

Around the third or fourth attempt, I started getting a little salty. Soon, I would be going back to school, and I really wanted to bring Falcon 4.0 with me to Military school. I had plenty of folks there I could recruit, and by then, I had discovered online gaming since it was more accessible. Falcon was to be the peak because this dynamic campaign could be played online. So, not being able to find this game was downright depressing.

Ordering it online was the obvious answer, but not in my house. Fuck no, that was like leaving a wallet out on the counter. We didn't use debit cards; it was cash or checks, so you had to use credit cards online. Suppose you ever wonder why some grandparents get scammed online and some don't. In that case, some have an irrational fear of identity theft. My parents assumed every transaction online was criminal or at least criminal-adjacent adjacent, so that was out of the question.

A week before summer would end, I finally tracked down a copy of Falcon 4.0. I don't recall which mall it was because neither had a copy. No, a frustrated stop at Walmart near one of the malls yielded positive results. It was on the shelf with all of its glory, Falcon 4.0. I quickly snatched up the box and immediately felt the weight. My God, it was heavy. I wonder why?

Allow me a moment to be an old man. There is a tradition that existed during my time as a gamer that is long since gone. This tradition is especially profound when you add a long commute from the store to your home. The ritual started with asking for the game before you got home. It was a question that usually confused my parents every time: Why would I want to hold the game now if I can't play it until we get home?

Oh, sweet summer child, it's the manual. We want to read all the cool shit we are going to be doing later. There was no more significant moment of hype and anticipation than reading the manual on the ride home. At that moment, the reality of game ownership had set in, and a switch was flipped.

We read the manual to prepare for what was next, not to learn how to play the game. You learn the game by skipping all the tutorials and being frustrated for an hour. Most manuals were pretty short and came with some in-game screenshots. Sometimes, there would be bits of lore in there or maybe some maps. I had a few games where you needed the manual to progress through the game. There were codes within that locked you out if you lost the manual.

When I opened the box to Falcon 4.0, I almost passed out. There was no little pamphlet telling me about all the great shit I was going to do, but instead, a binder. A three-ring binder with the largest D-rings I had ever seen. There were pictures, procedures, maps, lesson plans, documentation, research, and holy hell, it's 400 pages. I just sat in the back of the car in complete silence. Until then, I only needed a handful of buttons on the joystick, a keyboard, and a mouse. With that, I could be Chuck Yeager or Robin Olds, and I didn't need much else.

Falcon 4.0 was different. It was an attempt to make a nearly full-fidelity virtual replica of the Viper. Yet that was not the most impressive part. The Dynamic campaign that I had been going nuts about was incredible. I was just 15 years old, and though my passions generally could outweigh my attention span, 400 pages is a lot.

I skimmed it a few times, loaded up some instant action missions, and proceeded to die almost every time. Nothing made sense to me, and everything was so complicated. Can I press the joy button 2 to drop a bomb? What the hell is CCIP? Why doesn't the targeting pod just automatically find targets? Slew? Slave? HSD? INS? PC Load Letter, what the fuck does that mean?

To say I was overwhelmed was an understatement. I knew there were no YouTube or online tutorials, and I was the only guy in my online group of friends with a copy of the game. And when some of them eventually got it themselves, they faced the same predicament as I. There was no way I could set aside time to read, study, and learn. I wouldn't do that at school, so I wouldn't do that at home.

That was just me trying to learn the plane. The campaign seemed impossibly complex, and I did not know where to start. The game has two AI commanders with a set number of virtual assets. The AI commanders have rulesets and win conditions to try and meet to beat each other. This generates a massive air-land battle throughout the entire theater. This creates sorties and missions in the air and on the ground for both sides. As a player, you join a squadron, pick a mission or frag your own, and participate in the war.

You are not the main character, just a cog in the wheel. The missions cover everything one would expect in an air war. Combat Air Patrols, strikes on factories, battlefield interdiction, destroying bridges, escorting bombers, and interceptions, to name a few. The war goes on with or without you, and if you screw up or do something extra special, you don't really move the needle one way or another. You have an impact, but it's less important than all the other combined impacts throughout the theater.

Bro, I am 16 years old. I just discovered girls and how terrifying they are. There is no stinking way I am going to sit down and learn all of that. Rainbow Six came out, and I started to get into tactical first-person shooters. More of my friends played them, and it was easier to organize games. Tactical shooters are a lot less complex and easy to learn while being hard to master.

I shelved Falcon 4.0 and said I would try it again some other day. From 1998 to 2023, 25 years, or a quarter of a century, Falcon remained in my backlog. I eventually got into Lock-On Modern-Air Combat, which eventually led to going down the path to DCS. As I grew older and more patient, learning the planes was a lot easier. It's procedural, and I like that.

I am 41 years old, and for the first time in over 25 years, I have sat down to learn Falcon 4.0. The game itself has evolved over the years while still maintaining that excellent dynamic campaign. A modding group formed by dedicated community members created Benchmark Simulations; Falcon BMS is their legacy. They transformed Falcon 4.0 into a more modern game, adding more planes, theaters, and features.

Falcon BMS is the only full-fidelity F-16C simulator on the market. While it is still not a complete work, it is leagues above its more modern counterparts. DCS does have a Viper, and it's not terrible by any meaning of the word, but now, after flying in BMS, I understand what is missing, and it's a lot. Going back to DCS's Viper after flying this one would be a downgrade in fidelity and instability. I cannot tell you how often I have been in DCS trying to deploy a weapon and struggling with "Am I doing it wrong, or is this just a DCS bug?".

Time and time again, I would find myself doing everything right, only to find a bug somewhere making me fail. Sometimes, it's obvious, and sometimes, you never really know. It gets especially problematic when you play it online, and things work differently than when you are a single player. You get it perfect in training, go online and it all falls apart. You think it's you, and you suck. Maybe you do. Often times it is the case that I just suck cause I do. I can live with that because that is a teaching moment. Having things not work because they don't work is frustrating.

Yet, I would still stick with DCS for many years and occasionally install Falcon and the BMS mods. I would open Falcon and hit the instant actions and a few training missions. I would get some confidence, open up the campaign, and shit my pants like I was a teenager in the backseat all over again. Just a complete disconnect and mental block. I was too scared to play a game, which is really stupid and silly to admit, but it was true.

I have faced nearly every single one of my biggest fears. I don't like heights; I have had an Oregon Trail illness and almost died; I have been stabbed and had guns pointed at me. I have fought people alone in the dark and hunted down dangerous criminals on two continents. For some reason, BMS scared the piss out of me, and I would quit after a few attempts.

For years and years, I would play this dancing game of Will they or won't they ever play the fucking game. I once joined Discord groups, forums, Reddit, and a Ventrilo server. I would come out strong, but I would seek guidance when it was time to dig into it. People would tell me to read the manual every time, and I would turn back into that same kid. Fuck, that thing is over 400 pages.

A few days ago, I stumbled across a YouTube video about getting into BMS in 2024/25. It was put out a few months ago, and it was about getting into BMS. Until this point, I had focused solely on learning the plane, and this was the first tutorial I had seen that completely de-mystified the campaign for me. It was about 20 minutes long, and the dude spoke directly to me.

That evening, I followed his tutorial, only making changes as they related to my campaign and mission since they were different. The next thing I know, I am slinging harm at low blows from 30k feet and defending against 3 SAMS so bombers could knock out some infrastructure. When we returned, I would load back up for another mission to make craters out of an airbase. The next day, while preparing for a BARCAP, we got a scramble warning of MiGs crossing the DMZ close to Seoul. I ended up in a protracted fight that lasted about 5 minutes. It was 5 to one I got 4 but punched out somewhere over the DMZ. Listed now as MIA.

Nothing in my gaming life has come close to capturing the insanity of a full-scale shooting war. There is just so much going on, and it's incredibly overwhelming. Breaking it down and focusing on your tasking means you eat the elephant one bite at a time. Now, I am leading flights over war-torn Bosnia while blasting some Eagle-Eye Cherry. It took me 26 years, but I finally made it; now I'm a fighter pilot and a bastard. (Virtually)