Play Air Management II - Koukuuou o Mezase (Japan) Online

Air Management II is one of those weirdly addictive Genesis games that makes running an airline way more fun than it sounds. You start with a tiny budget and a couple of rickety planes, trying to connect cities across Japan without going bankrupt—which happens a lot at first. The menus are pure '90s Japanese sim game chaos, but once you figure out how to adjust ticket prices and schedule flights, it clicks.

What’s cool is how unpredictable it gets. One minute you’re raking in cash from your Tokyo-Osaka route, the next a typhoon grounds half your fleet and you’re scrambling to reroute passengers. The pixel-art airports and chunky plane sprites have this weird charm, and there’s something satisfying about watching your little airline grow from a two-propeller operation to a fleet of jets. Just don’t get too attached—bankruptcy comes fast if you overspend on fancy aircraft.

It’s definitely niche, but if you’ve ever lost hours to games like SimAirport or A-Train, this is the retro version of that itch. The manual’s in Japanese, but trial and error (and a lot of crashing) is half the fun.