Download Dive Bomber

The story
The story of this game is part fantasy and part history. Your main goal is to destroy the German warship the 'Bismarck'. The Bismarck had sunk a British ship named 'HMS Hood' and so, the British want revenge. They send the aircraft carrier 'Ark Royal' which is your base of operations. You pilot 'The Avenger' a special fighter equipped to do torpedo bombing. While the Bismarck really did exist and did sink the HMS Hood, the Avenger did not take part in destroying of the Bismarck.

Gameplay
The game offers you to either practice various things such as landing, takeoff and flying, its main purposes is to have you fly to the Bismarck and sink it. The airplane consists of four screens. The first is the pilot's screen, where you control the plane. The second is the Engineer's screen where you can keep an eye on the airplane's status and take care of takeoff and landing. The Navigator's screen lets you track your position as well that of the enemies and you can see where various points of interest might be. On this screen you can also set a point to navigate to, and it will appear on the compass on the Pilot's screen. The last screen is the Tail gunner's screen; here you can obviously shoot at things that you might've missed while you're at the Pilot's screen.

Controls
Here's the game's big question mark. While most of the controls are as the manual says, some are a mystery that even I have not figured out. The main problem being the engineer's light switch. In order to see and operate your instruments you need to turn that light on. This is essential if you need to take off or land. Also, during flight, you need to use it to check up on your plane. Be sure to turn the light off, the manual says, before you leave the Engineer's screen because keeping it on will make you easy to spot by the enemy.

That aside, the controls are your standard-run-of-the-mill kind of thing, arrows control the plane and space switches between fire mode and pilot mode. On the tail gunner screen the spacebar fires.

It's a little obvious this game needs a joystick as the keyboard is not enough! You'd be better off playing the Atari ST version.

Graphics and Audio
There are three video modes the game offers, being CGA, EGA and Tandy 1000. The only sound the game makes is using the PC Speaker and it only offers rudimentary sounds consisting of beeps. The engine sound is quite horrible before takeoff.

Dive bomber runs fine under Dosbox and natively under XP. In Dosbox be sure to clock it back a little until the beeps are clear instead of broken up.