Air (computer game)

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For the Japanese game series of the same name, see: Air (series)

Air is a text-based air combat mainframe computer game written in 1977 by Kelton Flinn and John Taylor. Air foreshadowed the first graphical MMOG, Air Warrior, which was released by the company Flinn and Taylor later founded, Kesmai. Air Warrior in turn spurred the development of key original MMOG titles including Neverwinter Nights (Don Daglow and Cathryn Mataga, 1991), Ultima Online (Richard Garriott and Origin Systems, 1997), and Everquest (Brad McQuaid, Steve Clover, and Bill Trost at Sony Online Entertainment, 1999).

Although Air was by today's standards a primitive text-based game, its influence over the following two decades of game evolution still marks it as a major title. The first version was created in 1977 and enhanced through 1979. As Flinn has said: "If Air Warrior was a primate swinging in the trees, AIR was the text-based amoeba crawling on the ocean floor. But it was quasi-real time, multi-player, and attempted to render 3-D on the terminal using ASCII graphics. It was an acquired taste."