In the dark days, buying a computer game was like Russian Roulette. The box art promised an empty chamber of gaming fun but more often than not was loaded with crap.
Screen shots on the back of the box started to show what the game might look like. On a different system or in a smokey arcade, with small print saying "shots from various formats"
Later on companies started printing "actual screenshots" on the boxes, boasting that the game would actually look like that.
One company named itself after this. "Actual Screenshots made 16bit games for the Amiga and Atari ST.
Now see that picture. A nice picture of a Lancaster bomber flying low and being cool. It was an actual screenshot. Of the loading screen.....
The game however looked like this:
More of a cardboard approximation of looking out of the back of a bomber from the tail gunner's position.Well so much for that.
The game had your 3 crew members flying a dangerous mission over Nazi Germany. The main gist of the game had you shooting down enemy planes from the rear gunner position and sometimes looking out the bottom of the plane and dropping some bombs. On hospitals and other dangerous places.
Now I'm pretty sure that bombers where better manned than this. Obviously spending cuts in the defence budget ment that only 3 crew were allowed. So the tail gunner had to work part time as the bomber too. You could choose from 3 gunners: Pilot Downs-Syndrome, Lofty from Eastenders or Captain CrapSpackle. It didn't matter who you chose because the radio chatter always said the same thing "What the Hell is going on back there?" The question is why did the gunner need to know things like speed, altitude or target distance? Isn't that the pilot's job? Spending cuts again. It's not in my job description. It says so here - Gunner : job duties - Shooting, Shooting, keeping score on a digital display. Occasional bombing duties may be required.
It was however an accurate simulation of how boring war actually is. The waiting for something to happen - however the waiting in question was the loading time, but at least you had a nice loading screen to look at. I doubt the guys in WW2 had that to look at. They could've taped a picture of a Lancaster to the inside of the gun turret in between enemy attacks I suppose to really simulate a crappy Amiga game from 1990.
