U.S. Navy Fighters may not be the most realistic flight sim released in the past few years, but it's certainly one of the most successful and playable, for a few reasons. The flight models, though simplified, are complex enough to give mid-level simulation enthusiasts the feel that there's something under the hood. In other words, they won't mistake this title for Hind, but they'll do just fine. Combine the adequately sophisticated models with almost instant playability, a wide range of flyable aircraft and opponents, good graphics, and a quick mission creation mode, and you have a completely entertaining and accessible sim worthy of its predecessor, Chuck Yeager's Air Combat.

U.S. Navy Fighters '97 brings this aging title into Windows 95 with a few upgrades that may make it a required purchase for fans. (The $15 rebate EA is offering can't hurt either.) The original game (in its entirety) as well as the Marine Fighters add-on disk are here (this was previously packaged for DOS as U.S. Navy Fighters Gold) in a native Win95 environment. With only a handful of native Win95 sims (Su-27, Hind, and the reissue of Apache are the only ones that come to mind), this will be an important factor for many. The graphics haven't been improved for the reissue, and while they still look great, they're beginning to show their age when compared with more recent titles like F-22 and Longbow.

Having the complete original game means you're able to fly all the aircraft from the original USNF, including the A-7 Corsair II, F-14 Tomcat, F/A-18 Hornet, Spectre, F-22, and Su-33 Flanker, as well as the AV-8B Harrier II (U.S.), the Mark 2 Sea Harrier (U.K.), and the Yak-141 Freestyle (Russian/Ukrainian) vertical/short take-off and landing planes from Marine Fighters. In addition, four new Vietnam era planes have been added: the F-4 Phantom, F-8 Crusader, MiG-27, and MiG-21.