A. There is a box version of WarBirds. The offline missions are the same as the ones in the downloadable version. Our marketing department wanted WB in a box to help get the sim into the public eye. Ultimately WarBirds is an ONLINE experience, and in that regard the updates and patches soon leave box versions out of date. (For additional thoughts on this approach see our recent editorial: Patches and Paradigms.)

Q. Do you foresee Imagic releasing a patch to allow for 8 player H2H or "EF2000 like" base defense multiplay?

A. There are no plans for this in the near future, but different modes of connectivity have been discussed. We want WarBirds to be a complete experience, and its lure is multiplayer... real human opponents. LAN based multiplayer connectivity is not currently on the design board, but you never know.

Q. Imagic has Dawn of Aces (WW1 sim) and Warbirds (WW2 sim). Are there any plans for a Jet sim? If so, could you give us a peek of the era and planes it might include?

A. Well, the next concept would be a Korea era combat sim. This seems like a playable concept, but it would be nowhere near the appeal of WW2 style combat. My personal concept of a Korean sim would include:

· F86/P80/F8F/F51/F4U5/MiG15/Yak9

· Focus on ground attack and a very advanced strategic system to facilitate more of a mission based gameplay.

Beyond that, Viet Nam seems like the next place to go, but again I think that gameplay issues would have to pull the focus off of Air to Air Combat and more on ground support to hold player interest. But I'd sure love to bounce a flight of F105s in a MiG 21 J.

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Q. Which is your favorite plane and arena to fly?

A. Without a doubt my fave is any variant of the 190. Second in line is the P47D. After that my obsession fades to just plain old lust. I love all the planes in WarBirds…. Some others that make me smile are:

• · P40B
• · 109F/G/K
• · FM2
• · P51B
• · B25H
• · Ki43

Thank you very much for taking time out to answer a few questions, and I'd like to congratulate you on the great job you and the Imagic staff are doing.

I admit most of the above listed items are about preference. But if we didn't want the improvements we would all be content to fly the old' RED BARON wire-framed, polygon mountain type games that first came out over a decade ago =)