Feeling like the Chief Micromanagement Officer isn't usually this fun!
Aircraft fans will like that real-life aircraft are used to shuttle your passengers around the globe. The game makes sure you know this since about three screens of copyright notices are presented right after the game is turned on. McDonnell Douglas, Boeing, Airbus, and other companies' aircraft will make appearances, mimicking real life abilities and specifications.
The player starts out by deciding on whether to play scenario 1 or 2. Scenario 1 takes place in the past when jet liners were just invented, and scenario 2 takes place within a more recent time frame that extends into the future. After also deciding how many people will be playing (up to four players are possible), a Home Base of sorts for the company must be chosen. It pays to base the company in a large, wealthy city such as New York or Tokyo since your Home City decides how much starting cash you get, and the bigger the city, the better. If a truly difficult challenge is desired, a home base in a city like Lagos can provide it.
After buying some planes and setting up some routes, the player can check the performance of each individual route by evaluating the expenses, sales, and exactly how many people used it each turn. This level of detail about your routes allows you to fine tune them by possibly changing the type of plane flying the route, the number of planes used, number of flights per week, and the fare that is charged per person.
The real meat of the game comes in when other airline companies try to compete with you. This is very challenging, especially on the Pro level of difficulty. It is very easy to engage the other companies in a price war to try to draw more passengers, but other means exist such as raising the service budget so all of your passengers get the first class treatment, aggressive advertising, or some combination of the three. Again, careful review of routes will reveal if your strategies are effective.
The game even allows you to go so far as setting up hotels in the various cities to attract more people to your airline and generate more profit. Smaller airline companies can also be bought out in order to expand your airline very quickly. This element of depth is very impressive for a game that was released on the Super Nintendo in 1993.
Now for the negatives. One of my beefs with the game is that you only have 22 cities in which to conduct business, and they are spread across the globe. I feel that this oversimplifies the game and that at least twice as many cities would have been needed to provide a true challenge. Luckily, Aerobiz's sequel fixed this. However, another problem that plagues this game and it's successor is that there is no easy way to review many routes at once or to make changes to them quickly and easily. This is especially problematic late in a competitive game when a player might have 25 routes to review, individually, every single turn.
The graphics and sound are really average early-SNES quality, and there are really no major comments I can make on them. They serve their purpose.
Overall, the game is surprisingly complex yet not impossibly difficult. Keen attention to detail and micromanaging will ensure victory even on the highest difficulty levels, and business strategy fans will have fun becoming the CEO of the #1 airline in the world.