Tech refresh 2026: Harrier Jump Jet

9 minutes ago
2 min read

The 1992 MicroProse Harrier sim, Harrier Jump Jet has received a new quality of life patch to remove the manual check from patched versions v2.40 and v2.41, courtesy of ZakMcKrack3n! THis patch was made available on 12th March 2026.

Prior to this patch, the options for playing Harrier Jump Jet were:

Play the v2.16 cracked version without a manual check but with bugs present and enhancements missing.
Play the v2.40 or v2.41 version and use a copy of the manual to perform the check.
Play the v2.40 or v2.41 with a cracked v2.16 version of frontend.exe which seemed to work but introduced issues when you tried to quit, not the authentic retro experience wanted.

Now we have a patch which replaces frontend.exe with a v2.40 or v2.41 version with the manual check removed, thanks to ZakMcKrack3n!

The following changes are recommended to the previous guidance in Harrier Jump Jetting into DOSBox Staging.

Harrier Jump Jet 2.40 Manual Check Removal patch

This patch is based on the v2.40 version of the game file frontend.exe (the latest version of frontend.exe) but with the copy protection/manual check removed. It is distributed as a zip archive containing the new frontend.exe.

The patch is compatible with patched retail and gog.com releases of Harrier Jump Jet and is a recommended patch for v2.40 or v2.41. This patch is available from the Internet Archive.

Patching Strategy

The recommended patching strategy becomes:

Install v2.16.
Apply v2.40 patch.
Apply v2.41 patch.
Apply Harrier Jump Jet 2.40 Manual Check Removal patch.

Installation & patching

Installation and patching Instructions can be found in the previous guidance in Harrier Jump Jetting into DOSBox Staging. The recommended process becomes: