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Jane's A-10 Warthog
by Bruce Geryk
design by Ethan O'Brien
In the history of flight simulators there is probably no name more venerable than that of Origin's Austin Skunkworks. Responsible for the legendary Longbow series, this cohort of programmers has built a truly legendary reputation for excellence. The fact that this team was working on a sim based on the A-10 Warthog aircraft generated considerable enthusiasm in the gaming community, even before the first concrete details had been released to industry news organizations. In a way, the tragedy of A-10 is that it was one of the few simulations that seemed to generate serious interest among gaming fans in general, and not just among the connoisseurs of serious flight simulators.
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Logically, A-10 was a perfect extension of the Austin development team's talents that had been showcased so brilliantly in the Longbow series. Both Longbow and A-10 dealt with low-flying, ground-attack aircraft, and the move from helicopters to the more general appeal of fixed-wing planes promised to extend Longbow's audience even further. During A-10's development, there was a notable buzz about the game that extended even to those who didn't fall into the category of traditional simulation enthusiasts. The fact that the game was never finished not only deprived the gaming community of this kind of broad-appeal sim but also denied the development team a chance to display its virtuosity to a larger audience.
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For those confused by the names Electronic Arts, Origin Systems, and Jane's, it is important to keep firmly in mind what forces were at work during the development of A-10. Electronic Arts owns a great many development studios, and Origin Systems is just one. Several years ago, Electronic Arts acquired the Jane's license from the international defense consultancy of the same name. The job of developing flight simulations bearing the Jane's name was given to various developers, and over the years a number of games have been released by Electronic Arts bearing the Jane's label. However, it is important to note that there is no independent entity known as "Jane's Combat Simulations." The games bearing this brand name have been developed by various teams, including Austin Skunkworks and the Baltimore Skunkworks, which developed both F-15 and F/A-18. Israeli Air Force and U.S.A.F. were produced by Israeli development house Pixel.
Yet the idea of a "development team" can create an illusion of continuity that simply doesn't exist when tracking the personnel who worked on the Austin team's projects. Only two programmers (producer Will McBurnett and wrapper programmer Steve Muchow) actually coded the Longbow series through all its iterations. The remarkable thing about the Austin Skunkworks team was that at any given time, the team members included some of the industry's most outstanding talent. While the Austin team has been marked by turnover, the Baltimore team has remained fairly stable over that same period of time. Perhaps one of the lessons to be learned from the cancellation of A-10 is that constancy and longevity go hand in hand when working on such complex, demanding projects as military flight simulations.
Next:
The story begins
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