Air Combat (1995)

After enjoying Ace Combat 4, I decided to go back to where it all began—with the series' first entry, originally titled Air Combat. Surprisingly, despite its age, the game remains playable and even charming in its simplicity.

The core mechanics are already in place: the planes handle decently, the controls are familiar (nearly identical to later games), and you can purchase new aircraft between missions. That foundation makes it easy to appreciate how much of Ace Combat’s DNA was present right from the start.

However, some aspects haven’t aged as well. The third-person view, for example, is practically unusable due to its lack of essential information—like your speed. At one point I thought my controller was acting up, only to realize there’s just no visual feedback that your plane is accelerating. On PS2 entries, I almost always flew in third-person; here, it’s a liability.

Another major limitation is the draw distance. You can't see much at all—enemy aircraft only appear when they’re roughly 2km away, which means you'll be relying heavily on radar to navigate and engage targets until you're nearly on top of them.

Visually, there's one odd standout: the color palette. Planes come in bizarre hues—red, purple, white—evoking more of a "Flying Circus" vibe than a realistic military aesthetic.

Whether it’s a stylistic choice or a limitation of mid-‘90s arcade tech, it’s certainly eye-catching… and yes, even the F-117 Nighthawk is affected.

Wingmen are an interesting addition. Before missions, you can choose to hire a friendly fighter—at a steep price—and select which jet they fly. You can also assign them a role: either defend you or go after mission objectives. It's a rudimentary version of squad mechanics seen in later games, but it’s cool to see the concept already forming here.

Mission variety is surprisingly strong. There’s a night bombing run, a desert mission that has you tracing oil pipelines, and of course, a ravine level—actually, two. The first is laughably limited due to hardware constraints (easily the saddest ravine mission in the series), while the second plays more like a tunnel or cave sequence.

While short—only 17 missions total—you only need to complete about 14 to beat the game due to branching paths. Despite the brevity, the ambition is undeniable. One mission has you bombing a suspension bridge, with animated destruction as it collapses into the water. The final boss is a massive flying fortress with four engines that must be taken out one by one. As each engine is destroyed, the fortress begins to tilt and emit smoke—visual storytelling in motion. A full decade later, Ace Combat 6 would revisit this concept in grander fashion, but the fact that this idea was already realized in 1995 is genuinely impressive.

In the end, Air Combat is a fascinating relic. Clunky and limited by the technology of its time, yes—but also daring, creative, and foundational to one of gaming’s great air combat franchises.

The first game in the Ace Combat series hasn't quite figured out that it needs to be called Ace Combat (outside Japan, at least), but it has figured out a surprising amount of the gameplay that would persist through later entries.

The short, branching campaign has a decent variety of simple, mostly okay missions with a couple highlights here and there. You can zip through it extremely quickly, but there is some replayability from the different paths you can take through the world map.

I'd say my favorite mission was one where you can't see your 3 main destinations on the map and have to follow an oil pipeline through a low-visibility desert—that's about as complex as it gets, but it's pretty fun.

Visually, it's nothing too amazing either but does have some parts I liked, like one urban nighttime level that suits the low-poly PS1 aesthetic more than most of the others do. It only really gets ugly in the second-to-last mission, which is mercifully brief and straightforward.

This isn't really anything to get super excited about, particularly in comparison to the one I played this past weekend (Ace Combat Zero), but it's definitely not bad and felt worth the quick stop on the way through this series.

It's fun, it's not that deep, and the story is silly. however, that's technically it. nothing more, nothing less. it's a good arcade air combat game from the early 3D days and it does the job well.

Value over time, it does get very repetitive, very bland and generic very fast by modern standards, or even by 2001 standards. it does not hold up very well, and you could get any average free Mobile game and have close to the same experience.

I am playing Project Wingman and remembered that it takes a lot of inspiration from the Ace Combat series. When I was a child I used to play Ace Combat 3 on my PSOne, so I gave the chance for this series again and tried the first title: Air Combat.

Well, we are in 2021, so we need to understand that it is a game from 1993/1995 (I think it depends a bit the version), so the physics, mechanics, etc., should not be ranked as we would review a current generation game. So, I was really impressed with this title, for its mechanics were really good, although some beginners' planes are slow and hard to handle (their turn rate is bad). It takes some time until the player gets the grasp of the commands, but when this happens, it becomes easier.

The missions are direct and with a simple background story to settle the events. As the player progresses, he receives more rewards and can buy more planes. The missions usually are to destroy some facilities and face some air-to-air combat; others include attacks against fleets; finally, there are at least two curious and challenging missions when the player has to pilot under a ravine to avoid SAM units; the terrain walls are a challenge, as the player needs to maneuver carefully to avoid crashing. There is a possibility to pay for a wingman to aid during some missions.

There are also three levels: easy, normal and hard. I played the normal option and it was just right during the game. During the mission briefing, if the player just focus on following the mission, there is almost no air-to-air combat and it is basically do the objectives and the mission will be fulfilled. I chose this approach. Why?

Because air-to-air combat is not so easy during early game and can be an annoyance. When the player gets the F-15 and F-22 - during end-game - maybe it becomes better to engage in air-to-air combat. Anyway, it is a air combat game, so maybe for some they would prefer to focus more on this aspect than following the main objectives (the hardest enemies, in my opinion, are the ground counter defense, because it is hard to bomb them and the plane get exposed a lot during this, making the player a easy target for the enemy).

Anyway, it is a 93' game, with good gameplay, a great air combat game even nowadays (although, for a more current gen experience, I am really enjoying the Project Wingman). Probably is possible to call this title a classic game and a must for any lover of air combat games. So, for me it is a great game!

Resume:

Pros

• Good graphics for its time, with good physics and large maps;
• Simple but efficient AI for its time;
• About 17 missions with interesting objectives, making it a great arcade game;
• Good variety of famous fighters to buy;
• 2 Players Versus for couch combats.

Cons

• The mobility of the fighters are weird at first;
• Although the missions tend to be nice, they may be repetitive and not original for some people;

P.S.: If anyone read it, please, don't mind my English. Its not my native language (which is Brazilian Portuguese), so, you, native speakers, may note a lot of influence of my native tongue over the English grammar and usage, hehe.

Thank you~ Obrigado~