Harrier Jump Jet
Released: 1992
Published by: MicroProse Software, Inc.
Developed by: MPS Labs, Inc.
Author(s):
Adrian Scotney, Tim Walter, Neil D Coxhead, Mike Brunton, Kristian Ramsay Jones, Tim Walkers, Amanda Roberts, Jacqueline Govier, Angus Fieldhouse, John Broomhall, Andrew Parton
VGA graphics - 320 x 200 in 256 colours
System Requirements
| System Requirements | 80286 (386DX-33 or 486SX-25 recommended). 2 MB RAM. MS-DOS 5.0 or higher. Hard disk installation only. Graphics support: MCGA and VGA only. Audio support: Ad Lib, Sound Blaster or Roland MT-32 / LAPC-I. Mouse and joystick optional (and recommended). |
|---|---|
| Original Media | Four 5.25" 1.2 MB (DS/HD) floppy disks or three 3.5" 1.44 MB (HD) floppy disks. |
| Installed Size | 7.03 MB (full installation - with intro) 5.05 MB (small installation - no intro) |
Introduction
Harrier Jump Jet is a flight simulation released in 1992 by MicroProse. Fly with either the US Marine Corps in their AV-8B or with the RAF in the GR.7, in three theatres of war: Hong Kong which puts you against the Peoples Republic of China, The Falklands against the Argentine forces, and Scandinavia's North Cape against the Russian Republic.
It directly competed that year with Domark's AV-8B Harrier Assault, though there are key differences between these two, with this title being an all-out flight simulation comprising three theatres of war, and AV-8B being a mix of a flight sim and a realtime strategy game focussed on a single island. Harrier Jump Jet gives you several difficulty settings to ramp up your skills with three flight models to choose from.
You can load or unload a variety of period-correct ordnance to your Harrier including air-to-air missiles, air-to-surface missiles, bombs, rockets, guns/cannons, and other items like a reconnaissance pod or ECM.
Harrier Jump Jet appears to use the same decent game engine as F-15 Strike Eagle III, but with the terrain now making use of gouraud shading for the first time in a MicroProse sim, though this is not as good quality as its use in Comanche: Maximum Overkill which was released the same year, though this game has more depth. The other colourful screens that are used to tell the story are very high quality.
From where can it be run?
From hard disk only. The original media comprises an INSTALL.EXE program and several large compressed files which the installer decompresses to your chosen installation directory.
Copy Protection
The game comes with manual copy protection. After the intro sequence you are asked to select the language your game manual is written in, and will then be asked to input a word on a given page, paragraph, and word number:
How to Setup
The game requires a minimum of 2 MB of RAM and 613,376 bytes of conventional memory (599 KB) free, which means DOS must be loaded into high memory for the game to run. The installed software comes with a utility called BOOTMAKE which will create a bootable floppy disk that configures your startup files to ensure the game will run.
The INSTALL.EXE program allows you to reinstall the game files to your hard disk, reconfigure your hardware options (sound cards, video card type, etc), and view the README file.
Choosing the Roland Sound option works with a game port MIDI cable connected between your Roland MT-32 and sound card's Game/MIDI port, so it does not require an "Intelligent" mode MPU-401 interface such as the MFC-IPC or equivalent.
The game requires 2 MB of memory with the higher memory allocated as expanded memory (EMS). Therefore you need to have EMM386 or equivalent loaded into memory in order to play Harrier Jump Jet.
Initial Installation
To install the game, execute INSTALL.EXE. You will then be prompted to choose the source drive, either A: or B:. If you are running this without a floppy drive (and have copied the game disks' files to a directory on your hard disk) you can get around this by using the DOS command, SUBST. This associates a path with a drive letter, so you can tell DOS that a directory on your hard disk is drive A:. Here's an example of running the command from my HJJ directory (which contains all files from the original media):
SUBST A: C:\HJJ
Now you can run INSTALL.EXE and choose A: as the location of my installation files, and it will look in C:\HJJ instead.
Once the installer has finished installing the files, you will be prompted to specify your computer's configuration. The installer auto-detects your hardware and selects the best option in both categories by default:
Once complete, you should see a message stating "Configuration file written". The options you chose are stored in a file in the game directory (default is C:\MPS\HARRIER) called HARI.CFG. The file is not text-readable/editable.
Problems
Symptom:
Cause:
Resolution:
To Quit the Game
Press ESC at any time. A screen highlighting some other MicroProse Software titles is displayed, along with a prompt, "Quit to DOS ? Y/N". Press Y to return to the command prompt.
Supporting Documents
Here are the original documents that came with the game:
And here are aftermarket docs:
Save Games
The game keeps track of your progress automatically when in a campaign. All personal data for the game is stored in a file called ROSTER in the main game directory. You can backup this file (copy and rename it) if you wish to keep a record of the roster at a given point in time, and then later replace the original with your copy to restore it. The file is not readable/editable in a text editor.
Versions of the game known to exist
| Version | Date | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0(?) | 13 Dec 1992 | Initial public release. |
Original Floppy Disk Contents
The floppy disks have no volume labels.
Disk 'A', 1 of 3 (3.5" 1.44 MB DS/HD): HARRIER 001 1,236,782 12-13-92 11:14p |
|
Disk 'B', 2 of 3 (3.5" 1.44 MB DS/HD): HARRIER 002 1,457,346 12-13-92 11:19p |
|
Disk 'C', 3 of 3 (3.5" 1.44 MB DS/HD): HARRIER 003 1,039,039 12-13-92 11:21p |
 |
Installed Directory Contents
Once installed, the following directory structure exists in the game directory.
Directory of C:\MPS\HARRIER Directory of C:\MPS\HARRIER\. |