Jetfighter II: Advanced Tactical Fighter was THE very flight simulation video game that got me into flight simulation back in the early nineties.
In this post I’m going to describe the process needed to install this very old MSDOS game on a Windows 11 PC platform.
Software needed
Off course we will need several pieces of software, don’t worry they’re all free in order to install Jetfighter II Advanced Tactical Fighter in our PC. Those programs are the following:
1. The game files: This seems to be obvious but still is good to mention. Since this game is, as far as I know, under the abandonware category, it can be found all over the Internet. I personally downloaded it from this link at Abandonware.com.
2. DOSBox: Since the game was released for MSDOS, a now defunct Operative System, we’ll need an MSDOS emulator that will give us the right environment to install and play our MSDOS based games. This is a free and open-source program that you can download from its official website.
Installation process
1. Create a folder called DOS right on the root of your hard drive. This will be the virtual C:\ drive inside the DOSBox’s MSDOS environment.
2. Enter your newly created DOS folder and create a subfolder called JF2.
3. Extract all the game files into the C:\DOS\JF2 folder. The ones inside the .RAR file you downloaded from Abandonware.
4. Install DOSBox. This is a straightforward process. Just execute the installation file you downloaded from the official DOSBox website, and basically click “next” on every step until the program completes the installation.
Play Jetfighter II Advanced Tactical Fighter on Windows 11
1. Open DOSBox by double clicking on the program’s shortcut located on your main desktop screen.
2. Once you open the program, you will see a screen showing the MSDOS environment. By default, DOSBox will be showing a “Z:\” as the default virtual drive.
3. Now you will have to “Mount” your virtual “C:\” drive first in order to play your games using the following commands:
mount c c:\dos
Once the command is written, just press ENTER. If everything is all right, you’ll see the following message “Drive C is mounted as local directory c:\dos\” as you can see on the following screen:
4. Now, in order to play the game, you’ll to run the following commands:
c:\ <ENTER> This command will take you the virtual c:\ drive you mounted earlier.
c:\jf2 <ENTER> This command will take you into the game’s main folder.
jf2 or jf2.exe <ENTER> This command will open the actual game.
If everything goes all right, you’ll see a screen like this before running the game:
5. Enjoy playing Jetfighter II Advanced Tactical Fighter on Windows 11.
If you have any questions about this process, please leave it at the comment section bellow and I’ll answer you as soon as possible to help you play this awesome flight simulation game.
