The original old IL2 box, the size of a breakfast cereal box. Later AEP box shows how boxes were wisely downsized in later years. They could have put 30 copies of the sim in the big box.
Literature in the box included a pamphlet from Ubi that had the release dates of new gaming software listed, IL2 is listed as "Fall 2001", which if it was it was very late in the fall.
There was an original Demo, and an improved Demo which came out later. I remember starting a download of a new patch at night before I went to bed on the 56K modem and it not being done the next morning when I got up. Sometimes it would take two long downloading sessions to get the new patch. That was the real battle of IL2, getting those damn patches on dial-up.
