Originally, the best I could do was the "Combat" game cartridge that came with the Atari 2600.
No one could beat me in the air games on that: biplanes with machine guns in profile looping vertically through clouds or jets in planview turnfighting with guided missiles through clouds.
Later, my first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000 (ZX81 for you European types). I couldn't afford to get their flight sim, so I used a mixture of BASIC and machine code to make my own. Later I got theirs, but still liked mine better.
My second computer was a Timex Sinclair 2068 (Sinclair Spectrum). For that one I got Fighter Pilot (F-15 sim) and Tomahawk (Apache sim). Those would be my first decent sims.
I still have the Atari 2600, Timex 1000, and Timex 2068. All still work. The cassette went bad for the 1000 flight sim (it was a copy maded from a friend's cassette), but I still have all the others I mentioned.
But the best I ever had prior to getting this computer is the Atari Lynx handheld games with the "Warbirds" WWI air combat simulator. It is up to 4-way free for all with each plane having different colored markings. They are color with 16 bit/16 MHz (really fast for the time even compared to most pcs). I have two complete systems with 2 Warbirds cartridges. The only other cartridge I ever got was the Steel Talons attack helo game, but it wasn't multiplayer
This game is still plenty of fun and the graphics are pretty impressive for old-style 2d. It got banned on my submarine because people got so excited and noisy when they were playing that they were waking up other people trying to sleep.
