Introduction and History

This web site was first set up to be a central information store for any UK pilots and players who participated in the first of the multi-player WW11 air combat simulation games called "Air Warrior" first introduced to the World Wide Web in 1988. The Internet (World Wide Web) was then a text based system only before the introduction of the Graphical Interface and Internet Browsers we have now. Players either telneted into the host, or directly dialed in via a BBS depending on their location to the host computer (Telnet is still available in plain old Dos/Linux). It was the first and grandaddy to all of many other multi-player graphical games developed since then, though many multi-player text based only games already existed such as the MUDs and "Federation".

Although not the oldest world-wide, the sponsors of this web site - The Krait Squadron - have been in existence since the early 90's and are the oldest surviving UK squadron to still actively fly in virtual air combat now mostly in the "Aces High" multi-player game, and others. Air Warrior was originally marketed by Kesmai Studios, and multi-player hosts of the old Dos versions were licensed and were in USA, UK, Australia and Greece, plus a special modified version in Japan.

Dos versions were available for 286/386 PCs, Macs, Ataris and Amiga computers, and all players were in the same arenas together on the host computers and played together. The first versions were on the early graphic cards in EGA with limited colors, before the VGA and SVGA versions were introduced as graphics cards upgraded to more on-board memory with half megabyte or 1 megabyte, and home computers made use of more extended memory.

Air Warrior Logo

Aces High Logo

Warbirds Logo

A number of updates were made to the Dos versions on a regular basis up to version 1.2 the last dos version, and the game and host coding was eventually ported to the "new" Windows interface, and the old dos hosts were closed down. AOL and Kesmai (Gamestorm) both hosted the first Windows PC version (AW4W -eventually called AW Classic), Macs then used seperate software on a different host,and support for the Amigas and Ataris were dropped during the last Dos versions, and the Windows PC became the common standard platform. Other updates followed -AWll and AWlll which were also available in boxed retail form, produced by Kesmai Studios, but published by Interactivemagic which included an extra "off-line" game with built-in campaigns, missions, and training. The downloadable free on-line version did not have the off-line campaigns and game, but the retail purchasable box version could be used either multi-player on-line or for the stand-alone off-line game. Patches for AW3 box version are still available from Gamespot.com

The AOL host was withdrawn and Gamestorm (The Games site for Kesmai games) became the main multi-player host, and also Mac support was also dropped so that the Windows PC became the only platform as these were in the majority and the seperate Mac version became uneconomic to support.
Kesmai Studios (and Gamestorm its games host) was sold and acquired by Electronic Arts who were contracted to supply games to AOL, who sponsored one more update to the AW Millennium Version and then it was terminated and EA sold off the Studios, and terminated all the Air Warrior multi-player hosts, though a further update to AW4 was in the developement stage.

During the time of AWlll and AWMV Members of the Krait Squadron (and others) produced and offered an add-on to the game, enabling players to change the camouflage and markings on their aircraft, and also the terrain appearance and this add-on was approved by Kesmai Studios. It is called the Scenario Aircraft Converter (SAC for short), and is still available on this site for those who still have the boxed campaign game version for AW3 and AWMV (Millennium Version) who still wish to use it. Air Warrior can still be used for single head to head combat either on a LAN or over the Internet, but as no multi-player host exists now, no multi-player is possible.

On closure of the multi-player Air Warrior Hosts many hundreds of players then migrated to either "Aces High" or "Warbirds" which were at that time the only other alternatives for realistic WW11 air combat simulators available.(note: WW11 Online which had just been published, although having air combat as part of its game was in its infancy and mainly a ground war game, the air combat part at best being very limited)

Updated 17/01/05 03:31:03