Ludography
Tracon II cover

1990 · Simulation

Tracon II

Tracon II is an air traffic control simulation game.

Released
31 December 1990
Platforms
MS-DOSWindowsmacOS
Genres
Simulation
Developers
—
Publishers
—
Country
United States

About

TRACON is a series of video games that simulate air traffic control. The games were originally sold by Texas-based Wesson International as an offshoot to their line of professional air traffic control simulation products. TRACON and RAPCON were released in 1989, and TRACON II was released in 1990. Both were met with critical acclaim. Wesson was merged into Adacel in 2001.

Keywords

  • sequel

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

The games include graphics that simulate TRACON air traffic control situations. At periodic screen updates, aircraft icons move slowly across the controller's sector. The player sees an aircraft icon with its identifier and the aircraft's altitude or flight level.

The game familiarizes a player with the difficulty of tracking many events simultaneously. Every aircraft is moving in a dynamic environment. The player must contend with the representation of three-dimensional space in two dimensions on the screen. Generally, aircraft must be kept separated by 1,000 vertical feet and three miles horizontal separation.

Reception

M. Evan Brooks reviewed the game for Computer Gaming World, and stated that "this reviewer's initial impression was muted, in that the simulation appeared to be too much simulation and not enough game. However, repeated play has shown that TRACON can be a very enjoyable pastime. It is definitely not for the arcade set. If one finds intellectual challenge appealing, TRACON is heartily recommended."

In a 1994 survey of wargames Computer Gaming World gave RAPCON three stars out of five, describing it as "detailed ... quite interesting", but for "a narrow market".

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
MS-DOS31 December 1990Worldwide

Games like this

Collections1 collection

Platform libraries

Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.