F19 Stealth Fighter does not have any of the ‘features’ that modern flight simulators trumpet on their box blurb. No framerate-destroying 3d graphics, no down-to-the last bolt physics, no need-to-be-a-qualified-pilot-to-not-crash flight model (OK, I’ve used up my hyphen quota for this review. Moving on). But, much like a chav who fails to realise that his souped-up Vauxhall Nova just marks him as a chav, these upstarts have forgotten what flight games are supposed to be about.

F19 didn’t stop you from flying the whole mission upside down, or doing a loop-the-loop. In fact it was actually quite easy as long as you were high up enough. But you didn’t want to. Why? Because then every SAM site, fighter jet and missile boat in the northern hemisphere would see you. And then not nice things happened.

F19 revolved around 2 mission types, three situation types, and 4 theatres of war.
The two mission types were ‘air to air missions’ and ‘strike missions’. Air-to-air was by far the most difficult – often you had to shoot down a transport plane, complete with a ring of fighter escorts which couldn’t be allowed to detect you (but which you could shoot – see below), and you weren’t even told where it was! Strike missions were of the simple bomb-this, photograph-this, airdrop-this sort of variety, although the general proximity of the targets to SAM sites and airfields (if they themselves were not the targets) meant that they were not by any means pushovers. Just try photographing Krivak at Murmansk if you don’t believe me.
The situation types were (in order), Cold War, Limited War, and Conventional War.

Cold War was undoubtedly the best – you had to get in, kill or (sometimes worse) photograph something (two things, actually, the second of which often being alerted by your activity at the first), and then get out without ANYONE seeing you. Anything that detected you (those SAMs, planes, and missile boats I was talking about) had to be destroyed to salvage your score, and any time you destroyed something, more somethings would head towards you to find out what had happened to the dead something. Which increased your chances of being detected again, and the whole cycle repeating. So the best plan was to do what you were told and avoid being detected.
Limited War was not, personally, enjoyable for me, but you might think differently. Put simply, your foes were more alert and more trigger happy, but you were still under restrictive rules of engagement and still lost points for being detected.

Conventional War was quite simply a free-for-all. Anything of military value was yours to shoot at (assuming you completed those all-important objectives of course). Stealth wasn’t entirely thrown out the window though – there were always a lot more bad guys than you had missiles/bombs to deal with, so staying out of their way could reduce the chances of having to bail out.

The four theatres were Libya (easiest), Persian Gulf (lots of oil derricks to attack), North Cape (sub pen, and those damn Krivaks), and Central Europe (hardest, plus lots of nearly invulnerable bridges.

As well as the choices above affecting the difficulty of the game, it had two additional settings. The first was for the enemies – Green, Regular, Veteran, Elite, with increasing talent and detection skills in that order. The second was for landings – a small but significant selector. You could choose between ‘No Crashes’ (it really did mean that, if your missile missed that patrol boat you could ‘land’ in the sea and get it with your cannon), Easy Landings (keep below 1600 feet per minute descent), and Realistic Landings (keep below 800 feet per second descent).

Like many great games, what made F19 stand out were its finishing touches. If you ejected (and survived) then you would either be arrested by the Soviets (complete with Tass newspaper mockup) or picked up by an OV-22 Osprey. Either way your commander would not be pleased. There was also one of the earliest examples of a persistent profile – every action in a mission would gain (e.g. completing objective) or lose (e.g. ejecting, being detected in Cold/Limited War) you points for that mission. Scores per mission were saved to your character’s record, and you could gain medals and promotions on that basis. And the ‘stats padding’ was limited to using Alt-Q on the game if you were doing badly.

I doubt if you will be able to find anywhere selling this nowadays, but it remains to this day the best flight game that any platform has ever produced.