Birds of Prey is a fairly complex combat flight simulator by Argonaut Software, featuring a lot of different planes and missions. The Amiga version contained a breathtaking intro that is sadly completely missing in the PC version of the game. The PC conversion was done by Chris Sawyer of Transport Tycoon fame.
Here's a more in-depth look at the game from a review at Amiga Games Database: "What [Birds of Prey] did involve was just about every jet the US and USSR had at the time, with C130 Hercules transports and the X rockets the US used to run supersonic tests on. Surprisingly, although perhaps not given their involvement with Armour Geddon, this was a Psygnosis effort.
Birds of Prey was definitely one for the aircraft fancier. You could pick a mission to suit and get into the cockpit of just about anything going, for either side. Handling was appropriate in pretty much all cases and the 3D engine suitably slick. You could mount attacks on ships, factories, and tank batallions. You could drop supplies from your Hercules, or strafe an area with the A-10's big gun. This was also the first Sim I'd encountered in which you could actually refuel in mid air.
Unfortunately there was a price to pay for having all these planes and the touches like mid-air refuels. And that price was the map. Or the lack of it. No Middle East scenarios, no European scenarios, just the one map, with the good guy side and the bad guy side, and that was it. So although you did have quite a few toys to play with, the sand box wasn't very big or varied. Which is a pity, because otherwise Birds of Prey was a very competent Sim. It just wasn't one I'd recommend to, for example, ThunderHawk fans who were used to evolving storylines and varied terrain types."
Still a Top Dog, regardless :)
Note: The answer for the copy-protection question is shown on-screen in brackets.
Review By HOTUD
English 
Comments and reviews
Crossman, It depends on where you're from. In the UK, they don't understand English.
Actually, those are called parentheses ()
THESE are brackets [ ]
:-D
For anyone who gets the missing file error, make sure you select MCGA (M) when it asks you to select the graphics mode and the game should start up fine.
For a game of its age, this was probably the best flight simulator in terms of what you got out of it. How many games in the early 90's can you name that allows you to choose from up to 40 different planes? I can only think of this one.
Also, coming from the age that precedes DLC's, you had the benefit of having access to all of the planes from the beginning, unlike most games today. I'd love a modern remake of this one (mainly for graphics), but I'm 100% certain that they'd ruin it with DLC's if they made one.
Either way, I've always loved this game. It played a major role in my late childhood. :)
Downloaded DOS version, tried to run it, got through the Sound and Graphics prompts, then got error "MISSING FILE PRESS SPACEBAR TO QUIT".
Graphics were below par?
Compared to what?
The graphics on the Amiga version were very good, much better than the graphics of my other flight sim of the time... interceptor by bob dinnerman. For one the enormous variety of aircraft, and the fact that you could see external ordinance on the planes in flight.
It was awesome.
Modern flight sims are much better but for 800KB for the whole game, you couldn't even show a screen shot from a modern game with that sort of memory limit.
fun game, like a very early DCS world of sorts - though with an actual dynamic campaign. the mid-air refuelling is a great feature, as is the real flight mode and the AWACS like in game map
loved this game, i remember it also had vtol harrier with special keys to turn the boost vector. so many planes to fly they should make a remake of this!
manual + addendum:
EDIT: Thx fdisk !
I had this game back in the day, and I can still remember trying out all the different aircraft available to you. It was a lot of fun, regardless of the less than stellar graphics.
Downloading because I used to have it. Graphics were below par but the sheer number of planes was nice.
This one had some really snazzy animated teaser ads that were floated around the BBS networks for about a year before it was released, promising that the game would provide real-time graphics of the same quality. The actual game's graphics were no better than Flight Sim 2 at the best, and about the only positive thing about it was that you could take any airplane then known and make it a fighter/bomber. Dogfighting with a 747 was even possible, and actually pretty fun. Provided you could ignore just how lame the graphics were.
No comment nor review for this game at the moment.