About
F-15 Strike Eagle 2 is a 1991 MS-DOS flight-combat game published by MicroProse, later expanded with a Desert Storm-themed content disk. This project is a from-scratch reconstruction of F-15 Strike Eagle 2 v451.03's DOS source code (the definitive 1991 Desert Storm expansion version), built by analyzing the original game's binaries rather than from any leaked or original source. It aims for bug-for-bug fidelity, with reconstructed C code that compiles to CPU-instruction-identical output versus the original; the author reports the reconstruction is now largely complete and playable against original game data files, though a couple of the game's assembly-heavy utility executables were reimplemented in C rather than fully instruction-matched.
How it differs from the original
Unlike the original, this project ships no game assets, executables, or copyrighted material — only reconstructed source code meant to be built and dropped into an existing legitimate copy of the game. It also offers an optional 'NOASM' build that replaces the original's hand-written assembly routines with C, though that variant isn't guaranteed to be bit-identical to the original.
Getting started
To run it, you build the reconstructed executables — using a real copy of the Microsoft C v5.1 compiler and the DOSBox emulator — and drop the results into a directory containing your own original F-15 Strike Eagle 2 game data files; it's recommended to remove the original loader executable so it doesn't take precedence over the reconstructed one.
History
The author has documented the reconstruction process in an ongoing development journal, and notes the game shares substantial code with its predecessor (F-19) and successor (F-117), which could allow the reconstruction effort to extend to those games in the future.
Media
Additional notes
- Legal note
- The author argues the project should qualify for the DMCA's interoperability exemption, since it contains no original game assets or executables.