Airline Tycoon

Sales of Airline Tycoon surpassed 150,000 units worldwide by 2001. In 2001 an IGN review gave Airline Tycoon a good rating with 7.9/10. Airline Tycoon 2 received on Metacritic a mediocre score of 57/100 from four reviews.

The original game, under the title Airline Tycoon, was released in August 1998 in Germany by Infogrames Deutschland. It was not translated to English, as no publisher released it in any English-speaking country, but an official English demo was made available both on-line and on magazine covermounts. Outside of Germany, the game had its release in Poland on September 11, 1999. Also in 1999 a standalone add-on named Airline Tycoon First Class was released in Germany (initially available only in German). In 2001, two years after its German release (and three years after the series' inception), Airline Tycoon First Class was the first installment to be released in English by Monte Cristo. As it was the first game in the series to be released in the United States and the United Kingdom, the publisher decided to remove First Class subtitle from the game box and manuals, though it remained in-game. Features added in First Class include ten brand new missions, multiplayer mode with up to 4 players, new MIDI music, cargo transportation and more. In 2002, Airline Tycoon Evolution, second Airline Tycoon re-release was published by Monte Cristo. The game introduced ten new missions, possibility of buying self-designed aircraft (and possibility of sharing these planes via Internet), possibility of hiring aircraft security agents, five new sabotages and more. In 2003, Spellbound Entertainment released a third Airline Tycoon addition, named Airline Tycoon Deluxe. It included all of previous versions, the only new part of the game was twenty new airports and possibility of accepting cargo from remote estates. Originally it was released in limited edition of 5000 items. It was available only in Germany, though it was not translated into other languages. Linux, Mac OS X and ZETA versions released in Autumn 2005 and Winter 2006 by RuneSoft are available in English, German and French. Airline Tycoon Deluxe was re-released on the digital distribution platform gog.com, including the source code in March 2015. The game uses a "source available" model, i.e. the source code is available for "non commercial purposes" only, and is not under an open source license.