Ouch my eye!

Maybe not rewriting it, but correcting our recording of it. In my last post we analyzed the assets for a large number of titles from MicroProse that expanded our understanding of the sub variants and when they first came to use. As a result I am having to correct the designations I have been using to identify them.

Changing how we refer to things when looking at the undocumented history of them is one of the challenges we face as we uncover more and learn more on the subject. This is actually the second correction I’ve had to make, though the first one happened before I started blogging about it. When I started off, I was looking at F15-SE2, which has assets dated 1989, as such knowing there was a later variant, I labelled that one as PIC⁸⁹. It was only after finding the F-19 assets and seeing they were the same did I change the name to PIC⁸⁸. This time around PIC⁸⁸ is safe, but PIC⁸⁹ makes a return in the form of what was PIC⁹⁰. Confused yet? Because if you’re not, I am. 🤣

So to try and clear things up, below is a list of MicroProse Titles we have looked at so far, that contain PIC files or SPR files using the PIC format. The Format Version column contains the newly corrected designation that we will use going forward. Titles without asset dates are ones where the file dates have not correctly been preserved in the archives I have looked at.

Game Title	Release Year	Asset Date	Format Version	Notes
F-19 Stealth Fighter	1988	May 88	PIC88
Sword of the Samurai	1989		PIC89	previously recorded as PIC90
F-15 Strike Eagle II	1989	Jun 89	PIC88
Knights of the Sky	1990		PIC90	previously recorded as PIC91
Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon	1990	Feb 90	PIC89	previously recorded as PIC90
Sid Meier’s Covert Action	1990	May 90	PIC89	previously recorded as PIC90
Silent Service II	1990	Jun 90	PIC89	previously recorded as PIC90
Lightspeed	1990	Jul 90	PIC90	previously recorded as PIC91
Hyperspeed	1991	Jul 90	PIC90	previously recorded as PIC91
F-15 Strike Eagle II Desert Storm	1991	Mar 91	PIC88
F-117A Stealth Fighter	1991	Aug 91	PIC88
Gunship 2000	1991	Sep 91	PIC88
Sid Meier’s Civilization	1991	Nov 91	PIC90	previously recorded as PIC91
Darklands	1992	Jun 92	PIC90	previously recorded as PIC91
F-15 Strike Eagle III	1992	Sep 92	PIC90	previously recorded as PIC91
Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon Deluxe	1993	Jun 93	PIC93
F14 Fleet Defender	1994	Feb 94	PIC90	previously recorded as PIC91
Magic: The Gathering	1997		PIC90	previously recorded as PIC91

That’s pretty much it for this one. Just wanted to make a separate post to clarify the shift in designations, and summarizing all the titles we have identified so far that use the MicroProse PIC format. In my next post we shall return to our regularly scheduled programming. 😉

This post is part of a series of posts surrounding my reverse engineering efforts of the PIC file format that MicroProse used with their games. Specifically F-15 Strike Eagle II (Though I plan to trace the format through other titles to see if and how it changes). To read my other posts on this topic you can use this link to my archive page for the PIC File Format which will contain all my posts to date on the subject.