The game is based around a realistic simulation of the Block 50/52 F-16 Fighting Falcon jet fighter in a full-scale modern war set in the Korean Peninsula.

[4] Many of these additions were collected by Lead Pursuit, which arranged an official license of the original code base from the owner Atari; these were published as Falcon 4.0: Allied Force in 2005.

The United States deploys extensive support to the South, including military aircraft, armored forces, and naval vessels.

This contains details such as flight hours, air-to-air and air-to-ground kills, decorations, a name and photo, and the current rank of the player.

Good performance (such as eliminating large numbers of enemy ground units, or surviving a difficult engagement) during a mission may lead to the award of a decoration or promotion; conversely, poor performance (destroying friendly targets or ejecting from the aircraft for no good reason) can lead to demotion or court-martial.

As is the situation for real life pilots, it is of the utmost importance that the player examines closely all of the data presented here to perform well during the mission, in order to best formulate a plan of action when actually flying the jet.

Failing to note the location and abilities of enemy SAM sites or CAP aircraft and account for methods of defeating these will almost certainly result in a short flight.

The mission section of the simulator encompasses the actual mechanics of flying the aircraft, radar and weapons operation, threat evaluation, radio communications and navigation.

'Rolling Fire' depicted a closely matched situation where DPRK forces had overrun the DMZ and made small gains, while 'Iron Fortress' simulated a scenario where the North had overwhelmed the South and pushed it back to its last line of defense.

The AI controlling the activity of the Falcon 4.0 campaign engine can be influenced by a wide range of configurable settings, all of which can be adjusted to meet changing objectives as the scenario progresses.

Many different options are available to customise this mode, including disabling SAM and AAA defenses, setting unlimited fuel, and the difficulty of the first wave of inbound hostiles.

Though originally slated for a late 1996 release,[11] the game ended up being rushed to market in order to make the 1998 Christmas selling season.

[citation needed] On 9 April 2000 a developer of the game leaked the source code of a Falcon 4.0 version between 1.07 and 1.08 on an FTP site.