Acepedia:20 Years of Ace Combat/Series

It'll be 20 years to the day soon. The day Ace Combat began and countless players enjoyed aerial arcade combat. I think this calls for a little history lesson.

Precursor
In 1988, Namco released the, the very first arcade board specifically designed for processing 3D polygons. It evolved significantly throughout its five-year lifespan, during which the flight game Air Combat was released. It was one of the first arcade flight games of its kind on such hardware.

In 1993, Namco released the, which featured many graphical improvements over the System 21. Air Combat 22, technically a direct sequel to Air Combat, was released on this hardware in 1995 either as a conversion for existing models or as a standalone machine.

U R Not E
On June 30, 1995, Ace Combat released in Japan on the new console. Unlike its arcade counterpart, the PlayStation game featured a full rock-and-roll soundtrack, a basic campaign mode, wingman support, and many more aircraft available to the player. It also featured unique tunnel flight and canyon flight missions, as well as a fight with an aerial warship. This is considered to be the start of the well-known Ace Combat series.

In September 1995, the PlayStation was released in North America and Europe. Ace Combat (localized in these regions as Air Combat) was simultaneously released, marketed as a PlayStation launch title. Internationally, it received mixed to positive critical reviews, praising its gameplay and soundtrack but looking for more from the graphical power of the PlayStation. Ace Combat sold over 2.2 million copies, and received the "Best Flight Sim of 1995" reward from Electronic Gamer Monthly.

In 1997, Ace Combat 2 was released internationally. Compared to its prequel, Ace Combat 2 had major improvements on graphical fidelity and gameplay. In addition, it featured more hallmarks of the Ace Combat series with its first fictional aircraft designs (namely the ADF-01 FALKEN and XFA-27) and hidden named pilots. 2 also featured a deeper story than Ace Combat, formally introducing us to the Usean continent for the first time, but it remained relatively basic. The game sold over a million copies internationally, and was very well-received critically.

The series' famous story-telling took root in the release of Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere in 1999, considered by many fans of the series as a classic. While Ace Combat 2 featured branching paths with different gameplay outcomes, Electrosphere was the first game in the series to have story implications depending on the player's gameplay and choices (ironic given that the player character was faceless and mute, which would become a hallmark of the series). The game also featured numerous fictional aircraft (many based on real-life designs, but some brand-new designs as well). Regrettably, Namco did not have proper funding for international localization of Electrosphere due to the amount of dialogue; consequently, the international releases in 2000 featured very little story (what remained was vastly different) and almost no dialogue as well as a strictly linear path. To this day, the Ace Combat community continues to ask for Electrosphere to be properly translated or remade worldwide.

Holy Trilogy
Many consider Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies, released in 2001 on the (as Ace Combat: Distant Thunder in Europe), to be the true beginning of the Ace Combat series we know today. Indeed, it was the first game to establish the history of the Ulysses 1994XF04 asteroid, the fictional countries of Usea (including Erusea and North Point), and massive superweapons (Stonehenge). In addition, Shattered Skies retained the mute, faceless player character while adding much more dialogue surrounding the player on both the friendly and enemy sides. For this reason, Mobius 1 is considered by many to be the trademark player character of the series. Shattered Skies also featured an orchestral soundtrack for the first time, which worked remarkably well; Megalith -Agnus Dei-, the theme of the final mission (in which both the mission and the song are based off of Christianity, also a first for the series), is likely the most popular Ace Combat song of all time. Shattered Skies is the most successful game in the series; it sold over 2.6 million copies with remarkable review scores.