And so am I, comrade. I was called Blue Baron in those days and I designed and produced AW for several years. Kelton Flinn created it in 1986 but he never was pleased with the outcome as he was such a brilliant but gentle and kind man. He was quite bedeviled by the white hot passion a pure PvP game produced.That is a golden oldie,wonder if I still have it. Going to have to burrow into my storeroom one of these days. I've still got an old laptop with WIN 98 that should run it.
When I took it on we supported clients for the Atari ST, the Mac II, the Amiga (the Ferrari of personal computers of that era) but we didn't have a PC client until 1990 due to its horrid memory restraints and lack of any or all game related features. No digital sound. No graphic acceleration. No one would have predicted that it would still be here and the Amiga not, but I digress.
It took nearly 6 years to turn AW from a chest thumping PvP culture, where the best players were regarded as rock stars, to a community focused game where folks cared about their squadron mates and little else. Key to that was large special events spanning many missions over a period of weeks. Odd thing is that the players who excel at large scale group ops are rarely the same people who are the most accomplished aces. And, in an odd way, that's pertinent here.
One last digression. Kelton would get so upset when things got toxic in the game that he did a very peculiar thing. He created a King Kong and had Kong appear in-game without warning climbing a building. There would be an IMMEDIATE and organic three country truce and EVERYONE would attack King Kong. What seemed a hilarious novelty was actually a glimpse of the future. Nowadays most MMO players spend all of their time attacking King Kong