Airlines

Airplanes, passengers, profits. Airlines isn't a game for those content with pressing a key and watching things happen. Here you manage an airline like an owner who has neither luck nor business acumen on their side. The publisher is a mystery, but anyone who's ever glanced at a startup screen in a travel agency or office would recognize the Microsoft DOS board from 1994.

It's an economic simulation where you build an airline from scratch. You buy planes, plan routes, hire crew, monitor fuel, and constantly worry about profits. The game gives you a world with airports and passengers who need to be convinced to travel from point A to point B for money. It's not a fun party — it's more like accounting work with a joystick.

The controls are straightforward, which matters for this type of game. You navigate menus, click, enter numbers, read tables. Graphics? Basic, black and blue-white logos, schematic maps. Sound? Minimal. Play long enough and you'll realize you're basically calculating whether you can afford new aircraft. Some would've welcomed more pace and dynamism, while others appreciate not having to dig through overwhelming data vaults like in professional simulators.

Airlines belongs to those games with an interesting concept that never captured players' hearts the way Sid Meier's Civilization did. During the nineties, more commercial titles with bigger backing handled economic simulation. Still, Airlines deserves a place in any collection of curiosities, representing a certain era in computer entertainment — a time when someone tried to make games "educational" and "realistic" without sacrificing fun.

It plays fine in a browser today if you want to see what computer administration looked like in ancient times. It's not entertainment for everyone — it'll quickly bore you if you're into story-driven or action games. But if you enjoyed reading business reports and building your own enterprise, you'll find your spot in that chair and savor the slow passage of time as your account grows by hundreds of dollars each month.