Aerobiz

Aerobiz brought a genre to the Mega Drive that was, at the time, almost exclusively the domain of personal computers — an economic simulation of running an airline company. Koei, a studio renowned for its historical strategy games, brought a business model full of numbers, charts, and long-distance decision-making to the console — one that doesn't look like a typical console title at first glance, yet it found its audience. The sequel, Aerobiz Supersonic, followed up on the concept two years later with new aircraft and maps, but it was this first entry that laid the foundations of the whole mechanic.

The player founds their own airline, chooses aircraft based on range and capacity, opens routes between world metropolises, and tries to keep the company in the black despite fluctuating demand and competition from three other computer-controlled airlines. The game also features random global events — from oil crises to natural disasters — that can upend the player's plans at any moment and force them to improvise a response.

While it's more of a niche entry within the Mega Drive library, Aerobiz showed that the console could accommodate genres beyond the usual action games and platformers, and it paved the way for the more successful sequel Aerobiz Supersonic, which expanded the same concept two years later with new routes and aircraft. For fans of economic simulations, it's a rare and still-playable piece of console history. Its clear menus and easily readable charts also mean that even a player who has never experienced this genre on consoles before can find their way around it easily even years later.

Why play it: It offers an unusual economic strategy with an aviation theme that you won't find in any other Mega Drive game except its sequel.