Actually, pre-2001. Something happened in September 2001 that stymied the most of the development and market for flight sims. It was mostly a quiet self-censorship, but a lot of retail stores (because it was all retail back then) didn't want to stock any "terrorist simulators" after that.Kyrian007 said:Also, get a usb flightstick... and any flight sim or space/starfighter game just destroys flight games that are on console. And most are pre 2000.
It's easy to forget that the news made a big deal for a while that the terrorists trained on Microsoft Flight Simulator for the 9/11 attacks.
I mean, there's other reasons flight sims went down in flames: space sims were all boring black backgrounds with dots instead of vibrant colors and textures, voice acting and mo-cap became important as well as characters and plot, home consoles took off with mostly standardized controllers, GTA3 had an open-world on the ground so you didn't need Wing Commander Privateer... etc.
@ OP - Wing Commander Privateer was the Elite Dangerous of the 90's.