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Air WarriorAir Warrior was the world's first multiplayer on-line air-combat simulator (at least for civilians). In it, a player could fly a simulated World War II aircraft, fighting with and against other players, each flying his own simulated aircraft. It was introduced in 1987 by Kelton Flynn and his company Kesmai . 1987 was prior to widespread non-government, non-academic access to the Internet -- Kesmai used the online service GEnie for the game's networked communication. Air Warrior ran on Apple Macintosh computers, had black-and-white wire-frame graphics, and cost over $10/hour to play. This was very rough by later standards, but Air Warrior was introduced only seven years after the very first flight simulator for mass-market microcomputers: Flight Simulator, by Bruce Artwick and his company SubLOGIC. Over time, Kesmai produced improved versions of Air Warrior and did business deals to provide access to Air Warrior through additional on-line services, including Delphi, CRIS, CompuServe, America Online, Earthlink, and Gamestorm. In 1999, Electronic Arts purchased Kesmai and became provider of the latest version of Air Warrior only to discontinue the game in 2001. The last version was Air Warrior III, and the last day of on-line flying was December 7th, 2001, the sixtieth anniversary of the attack at Pearl Harbor. Air Warrior was the forerunner of a genre. From among the most popular multiplayer air-combat simulators of 2005, two of them, Aces High and WarBirds, have an even stronger link to Air Warrior. Many of the main developers for these two are former Air Warrior pilots and former members of the Air Warrior community. In particular, Dale "HiTech" Addink and Doug "Pyro" Balmos were lead software developer and project manager, respectively, for the original version of WarBirds. They then went on to found HiTech Creations, producer of Aces High. Air Warrior IIIBesides many small playing fields, Air Warrior III had as one playing area a map of northern Europe with some features labeled, but Berlin, the Kiel Canal, and Peenemunde not labeled. There was also a playing area whose map was a whole hodgepodge of Pacific islands and the coast of Australia. The player could design his own missions on any of these playing fields. Fans of the on-line competition developed a tool that enabled the player to paint his or her own aircraft. Screenshots could be taken in combat, and even videos. These were available over the net to train and to gloat. Douglas C-47s could be used to carry paratroops to take enemy air bases. These could be shot down by flak wagons, besides by fighter aircraft. There were many ships and a few buildings to attack, even V-2s at Peenemunde, a bridge near Westminster's Parliament House, and the Brandenburg Gate of Berlin. Unfortunately, the targets that were destroyed soon re-appeared. Curiously, besides aircraft, one could control a jeep, a tank, a truck, or a flak wagon, but you could not drive through the fence surrounding the airfield unless a tank destroyed it at a given spot, and the aircraft carriers and other ships were fixed in place. The game is notorious for its sheep and for the cartoons which appear on the screen to mock the player when he died. References
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