Game 21: Aerobiz - Koei

TIME: 7:12:18 - DIFFICULTY: 2/10 - GRADE B-

GRAPHICS B The game is mostly stats and menus. There designs are competent and relatively functional if not particularly exciting. Mode 7 graphics are used for route openings, but the animation hasn’t held up over time. The character portraits work well enough and the many distinct portraits for each city around the globe are beautifully simple.

SOUND C+ The music serves its purpose. Cities have distinct themes which is a nice touch. Unfortunately, the current campaign’s hub city music plays for so long the charm wears off quickly. The sound effects are harsh, but thankfully sparsely used throughout the game.

PLOT B- Just the right amount of plot for a sim game. The player controls the CEO of a commercial airline–beginning in either the 1960’s or the 1980’s depending on the campaign–who essentially serves as the company’s god: directly controlling everything from setting fares to advertising. Any additional narrative is derived from the player’s successes, failures, interactions with competing companies, and global events. Like most of the game, it is more functional than exciting.

GAMEPLAY C+ The game is surprisingly fun for a game focused on finance and management. I can’t see many children being entertained by this, but it doesn’t appear to have been made for them–which seems odd for the time in gaming when it was developed. I found it relatively enjoyable as someone old enough to have a general understanding of concepts like profit margins. 

The player builds an airline competing with three others for dominance of the globe. It makes sense that this game is menu based, but like the graphic design, the player’s methods of navigating the menus could use some refinement. For example, the game could benefit from something like a list of current routes instead of scrolling around the globe to select or edit them. The controls are limited by the tech of the SNES as well: this game would be better off as a mouse or touch screen game. 

The game mechanics outside of menus are all based on stats and responses to player and computer actions. They perform well and seem fair for the most part.

DIFFICULTY 2 (out of 10) The game is won by securing thirty-five thousand passengers, opening routes to the available twenty-two cities, and managing to stay profitable while achieving the first two goals. The AI is competent enough on normal, but still makes mistakes and it is not too hard to out maneuver. On the normal difficulty I managed to win mainly by focusing on markup percentages, viable routes, and a little help from advertising. I ignored a few areas like worker budgets, establishing charter flights, and fuel/labor economy, but I imagine on higher difficulties that those things become more integral to success. Overall the ability to control some of the game’s variables to suit experience and play style, mixed with randomness of computer behavior and placement around the board, creates a game that can be as challenging or easy as needed.

NOTES

• The hardest part during my playthrough of the first campaign was figuring out what each icon meant and what actions–if any–they performed, and what the various stats represented. This is why the gameplay gets the grade it does-the game system functions well, but learning to navigate it is not user friendly.

• It seemed to me that driving customers to my flights was a larger challenge than connecting cities, if only because customer numbers are in a constant flux whereas the cities stay connect as long as you have money to maintain them.

• This game was surprisingly entertaining despite the overall grade it received. It seems like a nice little oddity and might be worth trying out if you get the chance.