Title: Aerobiz (NA) Air Management (JP)
Release Date: 04/05/1992
Developer: Koei
Publisher: Koei
So when I saw the cover for this game (the North American one as the Japanese one is pretty darn rad), and saw the business man looking wistfully at the planes flying outside his office, I thought this was going to be a slog. In actuality, this is a really well presented and entertaining management sim with enjoyable music and well explained interface.
Background
Koei and later Koei Tecmo is a company that has a wide variety of strategy and management sim games in their portfolio. They have their military/government sims in the Nobunaga's Ambition and Romance of the Three Kingdoms series, and their exploration and trade sims in Uncharted Waters. Aerobiz hews more closer to the latter, but focuses on managing a business/corporation into, hopefully, being the leading company in a competitive market.
In this game, the market in question is the air travel market. You run a corporation modeled off of corporations like United, American Airlines, Japan Air, etc, and you are fighting for market share while trying to expand your brand to airports and cities across the globe.
Presentation
The presentation of this game is very charming; smartly, instead of trying to make this seem like a SNES game trying to emulate a computer game, they leaned into a SNES friendly presentation. This feels like an SNES game rather than an imitation or port. Mode 7 is used to great affect, showing planes taking off from airports and landing across the globe. The world map looks like a map made in Final Fantasy IV that just happens to look like the planet Earth. The menus and characters of this game, who are mainly members of your board of directors, seem to be inspired by Pilotwings, with charming little portraits that will emote depending on your actions and the performance of your company.
The menus, as well, are pictures and icons instead of words, and after some exploration and tooling around with the menus to see what icon stood for what (no legend is provided for you), it was all pretty self explanatory. While the menus used muted blues and a very "corporate" color scheme, the animations and pictures in the game are very colorful and inviting. Animations are used throughout to depict events in the game, which was a smart choice given the fact that it would have been cheaper just to use text to tell you the events that are transpiring. For example, events like planes being delivered will show a plane being taxied into your hangars, or a ribbon cutting ceremony for a new branch office being opened in a new city. It makes what could be a very dry business sim much more exciting. The game does a great job making the esoteric exciting!
Gameplay
When you start a new game in Aerobiz you have some upfront choices: the difficulty of the game, the number of players that will be controlled by a human (there are always three competing players in the game), and what city you want to base your airlines in. As for that last choice, this is a very important one; if you make your home office in a bustling metropolis like Los Angeles or Tokyo, you will have an easier time as the population and economic activity in that city will mean you will start with more planes available, more people needing to travel, and a boosted amount of profit. If you start in a more economically troubled city, such as New Delhi or a remote city like Honolulu, you will have a much harder time getting your airlines off the ground. For my game, I started in Tokyo.
You also have to choose the "time period" in which you start the game. Yes, oddly enough, this game is tied to the historical context of the aviation industry. The two times periods you can choose from are 1963-1989, or 1989-2013, with the game making up events since many of those dates hadn't transpired at that point. As a history teacher by trade, I decided to go with the historical route and choose the first option. This will have dramatic implications on your game depending on where you started and where you are looking to expand. If you start and American company, you will have a tough time negotiating with the Soviet Union; if you start in Africa, the political instability of the region during the 1970s and 1980s will make labor shortages and decreased travel in that region a real problem.
The last thing you are told before you start the game proper is your win conditions: you have several goals you can shoot for over the course of the game. You can dominate the globe by opening up routes to every major city (of which there are 22) or out-profit the competition by reaching a set number of daily passengers. If your airline doesn't maintain profit for four consecutive quarters and ends the year in the red, you lose. If you also go the entire time frame of the game without hitting your win conditions, that is also counted as a loss. There is also the historical goal which basically will determine whether or not you win or lose. In the first time period, this is creating a plane or route that makes single plan Trans-Pacific travel possible, as most planes need to stop and land in Honolulu in order to refuel.
When the game begins, you will see at least two of your competitors go first, which is actually useful as it shows you what the early game is all about: opening routes. You will start with some planes already in your name, and your first turn should be spend heavy, as everything in this game takes time to get going. You will open up some routes to the few cities around you: you will set the number of planes that go on this route, how many flights a week, and the fare for the route. You will also start to be able to send your board members to different cities to open up negotiations; these negotiations are about purchasing "slots" for your planes (think terminal spaces). Most of these negotiations take about 6-9 months to complete.
As well, you have other choices which will impact the long term development: do you spend money on advertising and shoot promos highlighting your routes (it is really funny when these fail as it will show the lamest commercial of crying cheerleaders)? Do you open up hotels in cities in order to make some side income? Do you look into purchasing charter companies, which, if you perform a stock buyout, will come automatically with planes and routes set? Do you order more planes hoping to have more cities and routes opened up soon (which on its own has a whole bunch of settings)? Where do you allocate your budget: maintenance, marketing, or service? All of these options will help boost your economy, either directly or supplementally.
After every turn (which takes place over a financial quarter), you are ranked and graded as compared to your competition, and at the end of every financial year, you are given a detailed breakdown on how you are comparing to your rivals. As well, over the year, you will be given news updates for goings-ons around the world, such as the Olympics being announced to be in a certain city, or political friction/events going on in countries. Knowledge of basic modern history will help you immensely in this game, as you can start to predict when key events are going to take place, and plan your routes to maximize on this plan. For example, the game begins with announcing that the Olympics will take place in Vancouver, and if you can connect some routes to Vancouver and build a hotel there, then you will get a massive boom in income when the Olympics finally hit there.
If you ever get lost in the sheer amount of different plates you must keep spinning, you can always consult with your board, which is a great tool where the game will tell you where your current corporate strategy is wanting. For example, in my game, I learned that I was allowing too many slots to go to competitors at airports, and I wasn't spending enough on service. I was basically turning my airline into Spirit rather than Japan Air.
Music
The music in this game is really good! It keeps you invested and tapping your toes while reading through your reports and making decisions.
Final Verdict
I am really surprised with how much I loved this game. I enjoyed the time I spent with it (which was one complete game which I won), and would be happy to revisit this someday down the road. I really want to try a playthrough with a more remote location as a starting point, and experiment with some different strategies.
No comments:
Post a Comment