Aerobiz Supersonic is a business strategy game for the Super Nintendo. It was made in 1994 by Koei and later ported to the Sega Genesis. The game basically revolves around building up an airline company from the ground up into a worldwide leader using all of the business acumen you possess. Obviously the game takes a simplistic view into how this would be accomplished but being a strategy game it does have a lot of possible options to use in order to win the game. I’m going to delve into some of this for this review as well as talking about the other major aspects of the game.

Graphics 5/10 – Considering when this game was made the system it was on the graphics could have been so much better. They are not bad graphics but more like they were just “good enough” for the game to be playable. The maps are pretty simplistic in nature but again do the trick. The animations of faces and things like that are also passable. The whole feel of the game is a bit cartoony. It doesn’t try too hard to be super realistic so I forgive a lot of the shortcomings the graphics have. Still, I can not rate the game high on graphics because they are not good.

The one really enjoyable thing, the first time you see it, is the animation of a plane taking off when you set up a new route for your planes to fly. It is fairly well done. After the first time seeing it then it becomes annoying because it takes a long time to get through and adds nothing to the overall gameplay.

Sound 7/10 – I actually really enjoy the music for this game. It does not have a lot of variety to it but the songs are all pretty fun to listen to. And the nature of the gameplay means you don’t spend tons of time listening to any one song before moving on. They are laid back but catchy tunes representative of the area of the world you are looking at, stereotypically at least. The other random sounds in the game are all fine. Nothing exceptional about any of it really. It all fits the overall feel of the game and does not distract from the game.

Addictiveness 8/10 – if you are a strategy game fan then this game will appeal to you. Since I am a big fan of this style of game I am rating this game highly. Having 4 starting points, in time that all affect the type of planes you have available, as well as having multiple starting points in each of the 7 areas of the world to play in allows for a lot of replay-ability to the game. The game is fairly slow paced so there is no rush or pressure while playing allowing you to take your time learning and experiencing the game. The first time through is tough because there are a lot of things to learn and get used to before really getting good at the game.

There are also random and planned events that happen in the game. The planned ones follow real historical events that occurred before the game was made. Future planned events are only guessed at as what the developers thought my happen going forward. The random events are things like certain towns being the vacation destination for that year. If you are flying to that city or own property there then you are likely to get a boost from the extra tourism.

Story – you are building an airline from the ground up. You don’t have a character and no one else really matters. Doesn’t matter where you start or anything that doesn’t change the story. It basically doesn’t exist so I’m not rating the game on story at all.

Depth 7/10 – this to me was one of the more enjoyable strategy games for the SNES. Not many games on the SNES that are billed as strategy games have as much to do as this game did. Obviously the main thing you did in this game was to set up routes to fly your planes on from city to city in order to make money. In this you mad multiple planes to pick from especially depending on which era you pick to start in. Each era had different planes to start and end with as the time progressed. They did overlap a bit so you would see some of the same planes but not all at the same time.

You also had to buy extra planes when you started to run out of existing planes. You had multiple builders to pick from and each builder had a variety of planes to choose from depending on the era. Most of them were historical up until the mid 1990’s and then it all became a guess after that. Still, this added a lot of variety to the game. Also, depending on who you bought from and where you were located the prices varied.

There were also a fair number of things you could buy in each city in the game. You could buy hotels and theaters and charter airlines and things like that to boost your revenue. A lot of the time the extra revenue was not a huge impact but a strategy involving buying up a lot of these kinds of properties over time could help with cash flow problems in the game and possibly help make flights more profitable. There were also some other side options you could pick from. Things like maintenance and advertising could be changed to save money. Lots of variables in this game were available to make it quite an interesting and in depth game.

Difficulty 7/10 – while this is not anywhere near the most difficult game to play it does take an understanding of how businesses operate in general and supply and demand in order to be successful. You can not just force people to fly to places they do not want to go on planes that do not make any sense. You have to understand that not every flight from 1 place to another is going to be successful and that there are things you can do to help or hinder that. A few plays through the game should be enough to understand the game sufficiently in order to win on a basic difficulty level. Starting in North America or Western Europe helps a lot as opposed to starting in Africa or the Middle East. Little things that can make the game easier or harder to play by choice or by accident.

Overall 6.8/10 – this is not a game for every person out there. It is a very strategy and business centered game style. However, if you like this style of game this is definitely a game that is worth giving a try. I’ve played it multiple times and will likely play it again sometime just to see if I can win again.

I've played this back in the day (I'm old). I think your score is fair and you're dead right about the graphics for this game were just passable. Koei sure had a lot of strategy games back in the SNES days, this is probably one of their easier games to get into. 

endings : yeah, I find non-PC strategy games to be REALLY hit and miss. Consoles just don't have the strategy game figured out. Almost all the good ones were made for PC. This is one of the exceptions though not the BEST example.

Still, it's a fun game for those that like this style of play.