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Air 1977 Video Game




''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."