A strange little side quest
Zoom out from Airforce Combat 2021 for a moment and the timeline gets surprisingly deep. Doom changed game design and distribution in 1993 by separating its engine from content and spreading widely through shareware. There is another connection worth keeping in the same mental pocket: Street Fighter II, released in 1991, turned head-to-head arcade fighting into a worldwide phenomenon and helped define the modern fighting-game genre. That is the kind of background detail that makes another attempt at Airforce Combat 2021 feel a bit more connected to the history of play.
