Air Warrior - Air Warrior

The original version of Air Warrior ran on Apple Macintosh, Commodore Amiga, and Atari ST computers, had simple black and white wireframe graphics, and cost over $10/hour to play. Over time, Kesmai produced improved versions of the game, starting with SVGA Air Warrior (AWSVGA) in 1993, and continuing with Air Warrior for Windows (AW4W) in 1996, Air Warrior II (AWII) in early 1997, Air Warrior III (AWIII) later in 1997, and finally Air Warrior III Millennium Version (AW:MV) in 2000.

Kesmai also did business deals to provide access to Air Warrior through additional on-line services, including Delphi, CRIS, CompuServe, America Online, Earthlink, Gamestorm and CompuLink. A version of Air Warrior for Windows was ported back to the Macintosh in 1997 in an Internet open beta, and then later moved to America Online. In 1999, Electronic Arts purchased Air Warrior, and became provider of the latest version of the game, only to discontinue it in 2001. The last version was Air Warrior III Millennium Version, and the last day of on-line flying was December 7, 2001, the sixtieth anniversary of the attack at Pearl Harbor. On that last day many current and former players reunited for one last sortie.

Several Air Warrior conventions were also held during the games life. Players would attend the convention which was highlighted by a room that was loaded up with computers so that players could fly missions together online at the convention.

The Air Warrior map was divided into 3 Countries, the A's, B's and C's. Each Country started a round with a predetermined 1/3rd of the map. Airfields from which you took off from were defended by 1 stationary Flak gun and could be reinforced by player controlled Flak Panzers or "Flak Panzies" as the players were called due to their lacking flying skills and use of ground based vehicle. Opposing airfields could be captured by dropping airborne infantry from C-47s. There was one permanent base for each country to keep a team from being completely overrun. Maps consisted of Europe and Pacific. There were also 2 different realism levels as well as a World War 1 Map.

Aircraft were primarily piston driven propeller aircraft of the WW2 era although Bi-Planes and Tri Planes were included in the WW1 arena and there were two jet aircraft but for online play they were only released on the occasional "Jet" night.

Air Warrior might have been the first multiplayer game that allowed players to "multi-crew" a single plane, whereby one person fly the bomber and others sign on as gunner. A favorite among players was the "death star": a fully loaded B-17 bomber with its full complement of approximately 6 gunners.

Regardless of the player’s affiliation, for the most part there was camaraderie not seen in games since. This was due in part to the $10 an hour charge to play as most of the players were adults and conducted themselves with honor.