With the advent of new technologies comes a time of innovation, a time when pioneers set out to explore the potential of the latest inventions. Red Baron is remarkable in this concern because it is not only about the early days of a new kind of warfare, but because it was in itself one of the first dedicated combat flight simulators for home computers set in this era. And so it helped to lay down the basics of the genre just like the historical biplanes in it did for the aerial combat. A very fitting combination so to speak which gives the game a timeless appeal: Entering this world of rough 3D graphics and simplistic flight models seems to have a lot in common with taking off in one of those fragile flying machines of WWI. But let us take a look at how exactly this works to the game’s (dis)advantage and what else makes it a classic.
Battle Bugs came out at a strange time. Well, now that this game would ever have been considered regular. Bearing a number of similarities with the rising so-called Real Time Strategy genre, it didn't quite fit in even at first glance. And the more you played it, the more apparent it became how this game went its own ways and followed fundamentally different paradigms. Exploring paths which even since then have rarely been explored again. While on the other hand, the footprint it did leave on the later genre shows in many small details nevertheless.
The idea of a vehicle that moves along a grid and attacks incoming enemies along the lines appeared as early as 1980 in the arcade game Targ. This strangely limited basic principle from the early 8-bit era was nevertheless reused many times in the course of computer history. With DIF-1 Laser Tank, a clone was even released for the DOS-PC in 1991. Thanks to its completely English language interface, the game's Taiwanese origin is barely recognisable. Nevertheless, this remarkable action-game met with virtually no response in the West.