And we’re going to kick things off, as you may have imagined, by going all the way back to the series’ inception, with the release of its first instalment in 1995. Interestingly enough, the series debuted with a game that was titled Air Combat, not Ace Combat, releasing as a launch title for the original PlayStation. Originally, it was supposed to be a port of an arcade title that Bandai Namco (then known as Namco) had released a couple of years ago, but after the development team realized during development that the PS1 wasn’t powerful enough to be able to run the original game well enough, they decided to just make an entirely new game for the console from scratch.

Air Combat’s arcade-style flight combat gameplay endeared itself to many right out the gate. The game was well received by critics, which was reflected in solid sales as well- solid enough, in fact, that the franchise’s debut outing is still it’s third highest selling game to date, nearly thirty years on from its release. Air Combat was successful enough, in fact, that its publisher quickly greenlit a sequel. It launched not long after, releasing as Ace Combat 2 in 1997, just a couple of years after its predecessor.

One of the biggest things that drove Ace Combat 2’s development, interestingly enough, was designer Masanori Kato’s dissatisfactions with the visuals of the original game, and that, in turn, meant that upping the ante with the production values was one of the development team’s central goals while Ace Combat 2 was in the works. It’s fair to say that they succeeded. Upon its release, the sequel was praised by critics and players alike for not only its significantly improved visuals, but also greater variety in missions, more action-packed flight simulation gameplay, and more, which, combined with solid sales yet again, meant that Ace Combat had quickly established itself as an important IP for Namco.

The series’ third outing came not long afterward, as you may have guessed. Launching after another couple of years in 1999, Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere was the series’ final outing on the PS1- and, in many ways, also one of the series’ more experimental and weirdly ambitious games, especially for its time. In retrospect, there’s plenty that sets Ace Combat 3 apart, but series fans will tell you that its focus on story is one of the chief reasons. Ace Combat as a franchise has become strongly associated with its emphasis on story over the years, and many will tell you that Ace Combat 3 was the game that truly kicked that off in many respects.

The game also did so in a new, near-future setting (which, incidentally, also let you fly spacecraft in addition to your regular planes), while it also went on to become notorious for the stark differences between its Japanese and western releases. The latter, you see, ended up having to leave a great deal on the cutting floor due to severe budget constraints, which means there’s a significant portion of Ace Combat 3 content that is present in its Japanese version, but not its international one- most prominent being a branching storyline that changed based on players’ actions.

Understandably enough, Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere didn’t enjoy the best critical reception in western markets, and that was reflected in its sales. In North America in particular, the game underperformed, and in the end, its total sales were lower than Namco had hoped they would be. Thankfully, that wasn’t the end of the series. In fact, just a couple of years later, Ace Combat made its debut on the PlayStation 2, with Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies coming out in 2001. And as Ace Combat faithful will gladly tell you, this one ranks as probably one of the series’ most pivotal (and best) games.

There’s so much that we now strongly associate with the Ace Combat franchise in general that can be traced back to Shattered Skies. It was, for instance, the first game in the series to be developed by an internal development team dedicated entirely to the Ace Combat franchise, called Project Aces, which is still responsible for developing Ace Combat games to this day. On top of that, Ace Combat 4, which was designed as a reboot after the relative dip that was Electrosphere, was also the first game to establish the Strangereal setting that the series still uses to this day. For those unfamiliar, Strangereal is the name of the fictional universe where the Ace Combat franchise is largely set. Strangereal’s Earth is very similar to the real world in many ways, but things such as countries, the world’s history, weaponry and technology, and more tend to be quite different.

Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies’ attempt to reset the franchise and bring it back on track turned out to be a successful one. It enjoyed widespread critical acclaim, drawing praise for everything from its story to its action-packed linear gameplay to how it leveraged the PS2’s more powerful hardware to deliver top-notch visuals (for the time, at least). In addition to being a critical hit, it was also a big commercial success. In fact, with over 2.64 million units sold, it was the series’ highest selling game until Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown overtook it just a few years ago.

Given how well Ace Combat 04 was received, it’s no surprise looking back that the series’ next game was the kind of iterative sequel that it turned out to be. Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War launched for the PS2 in 2004, a little over a couple of years after its predecessor came out, and by and large, the consensus was that much like Ace Combat 04, Ace Combat 5 was an excellent combat flight sim- for many of the same reasons, in fact. Ace Combat 5 was happy to be a “more of the same” kind of sequel, building on the previous entry’s foundations with a largely unambitious but well-made and compelling experience. From a sales perspective, it certainly wasn’t the kind of success that Shattered Skies was, but it still sold well enough in its own right.

From that point forward, Bandai Namco also opened up the Ace Combat franchise up to beyond just mainline numbered releases, with several spinoffs releasing over the next few years- like, for starters, top down 2D shooter Ace Combat Advance, which released for the GBA in 2005, or Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War for the PS2 and Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception for the PlayStation Portable, both of which launched in 2006. A few more spinoffs followed in the years afterward- but not before Bandai Namco returned with another mainline numbered entry, with Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation releasing in 2007. This one, however, was another dip for the franchise.

Ace Combat 6 released exclusively for the Xbox 360, which, combined with relatively less enthused reception from critics and players compared to its predecessors, resulted in lower sales than Bandai Namco would have expected. In fact, to date, the game hasn’t managed to breach 1 million units sold even today, and is still the series’ lowest selling mainline entry to date. It doesn’t enjoy the best reputation among fans either. Though fun enough to play in its own right, Ace Combat 6 is deemed by many to be one of the series’ less engaging experiences, whether that’s because of its disappointing story, a handful of annoying design choices, or something else.

Given its unequivocal failure from a commercial point of view, it was no surprise that Fires of Liberation turned out to be Ace Combat’s last mainline game for a long, long time. Several more Ace Combat spinoffs were released by Bandai Namco in the years afterward, but there was a period where it seemed like the series’ stock was plummeting constantly, and whether or not it would ever claw its way back up was anyone’s guess- though, at the time, the smart money would have been on no.

That was thanks in large part to the fact that the series felt like it just didn’t know what it wanted to be with some of the spinoff instalments it put out in the years that followed. In 2010 came Ace Combat: Joint Assault, another PlayStation Portable spinoff, which was notable for being the first ever Ace Combat game to be set in the real world- though there really wasn’t much else that stood out about it. A year later, we got Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, which was also set in the real world, but in its own continuity separate from Joint Assault. Billed as a gritty, realistic take on the Ace Combat formula, Assault Horizon was ultimately an unremarkable, overly linear game that did little to bring Ace Combat back to its glory days. That same year, Bandai Namco also release Ace Combat Assault Horizon Legacy, which, confusingly enough, had absolutely nothing to do with Assault Horizon, and was instead a remake of Ace Combat 2- and, well, it wasn’t terrible. But at the end of the day, it wasn’t anything beyond unremarkable either, sadly enough.

Then came Ace Combat Infinity in 2014, and somehow, it was an even lower low for the series. Infinity was a freemium, multiplayer-focused game that came out in 2014 as a PlayStation 3 exclusive, which is just an awful combination of bad decisions. Unsurprisingly, it was lambasted by critics almost unanimously, and for many, it became a symbol of the state that Ace Combat had found itself in- a state of complete and utter ruin, to the point where it was being salvation. Or so we thought at that point, at any rate.

Impossibly enough, in spite of the widespread criticism it endured, Ace Combat Infinity somehow managed to be a commercial success for Bandai Namco, which led to the publisher greenlighting a new numbered entry, something that many had though was never going to happen again. Twelve years after the series’ last mainline entry, in 2019, Bandai Namco released Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, and without a shadow of doubt, proved to be worth the wait. A strong campaign, a wealth of modes, solid multiplayer gameplay, VR support, and more came together in one of the series’ strongest outings, and the acclaim it garnered also led to impressive sales. In fact, Ace Combat 7 went on to sell over 4 million units (as of 2022), which makes it the series’ highest selling game by far.

Which brings us to now, at a point where the series’ future is once again looking secure. Ace Combat 7 did an excellent job of bringing the beloved IP back into the limelight, and with its critical and commercial success, Bandai Namco has also reinvested into the franchise. In 2022, in fact, the company established Bandai Namco Aces as the new studio to lead development on all things Ace Combat, while the year prior, it was also announced that Ace Combat 8 was being developed in collaboration with support studio ILCA, and that it would be built on Unreal Engine 5.

It has, of course, been a handful of years since then, which begs the question- just where is Ace Combat 8? Bandai Namco has been working on it for a while, so are we to assume that we’re approaching the time where it will be officially unveiled? Prominent leaker Midori recently took to Twitter and claimed that the flight combat series’ next mainline instalment was indeed Bandai Namco’s next big game- but what exactly does that tell us about when it’ll come out? Is it being lined up for a release within next year or so? And if so, does that mean we should expect an announcement sometime soon?

At this point, all we can do is speculate- but there’s little doubt that there’s no shortage of excitement around what the future holds for the Ace Combat franchise. Hopefully, Bandai Namco will tell us more about exactly what that will entail sooner rather than later.

As reported by Twinfinite, Ace Combat brand director Kazutoki Kono has confirmed that in order to realize the creative and technical vision the development team has for Ace Combat 8 (or whatever they end up calling the game), the title is being developed using Unreal Engine 5.

Since the official reveal of Unreal Engine 5 last year, a number of major games have been confirmed to be using Epic’s next-generation engine for development. These include the likes of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, Dragon Age 12: The Flames of Fate, BioShock 4, State of Decay 3, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl, The Coalition’s upcoming projects, and possibly even The Outer Worlds 2.

METAL GEAR SOLID 2

Metal Gear Solid 2 came out in Europe a few months after it did elsewhere, but players got a pretty sweet reward for their patience in the form of European Extreme difficulty. Even harder than regular Extreme, European Extreme gave players zero rations throughout the games, buffed up enemies so they could essentially deliver one hit kills (especially the bosses), and made it so that if you ever broke stealth and alerted an enemy, it was game over for you.

]]> https://gamingbolt.com/15-games-that-had-an-unlockable-harder-difficulty-only-to-drive-you-crazy/feed 0 415923 https://gamingbolt.com/ridge-racer-type-4-and-ace-combat-5-won-bandai-namco-producers-polls-about-remakes https://gamingbolt.com/ridge-racer-type-4-and-ace-combat-5-won-bandai-namco-producers-polls-about-remakes#respond Wed, 20 Apr 2016 05:57:17 +0000 http://gamingbolt.com/?p=263771

Some time ago, we told you that Bandai Namco’s Producer Kazutoki Kon had asked two questions on Twitter- two polls, asking users which classic entries in the Ace Combat and Ridge Racer franchises they would like to see remade. While this was nothing official (and no official announcement has been made yet still), it was interesting to see that Bandai Namco may actually be considering remakes in their classic, now largely inactive, franchises.

The results to both of these polls were predictable, as fan favorite games took the top spots in both polls. Ace Combat 5 was the game that ranked the highest in the Ace Combat poll, while Ridge Racer Type 4 triumphed over all other contenders in the Ridge Racer poll.

Of course, as mentioned above, no official announcement has been made yet- so this poll may just have been a fun exercise with no tangible reward, for all we know. As of right now, no new Ridge Racer game is announced. Ace Combat 7, meanwhile, is set to launch on PS4.

While Ace Combat at least seems like it will be getting a chance at a full fledged revival when Ace Combat 7 hits later this year (with full PlayStation VR compatibility, no less!), Ridge Racer has, sadly, been dead for a while. The last major release in the franchise was Ridge Racer Unbounded, and while it was excellent, it was also a commercial failure, and we haven’t seen much from the series ever since.

Bandai Namco, however, may be looking at returning to it, and to Ace Combat, soon- it appears as though they are holding Twitter polls asking users which Ace Combat and Ridge Racer games they would like to see remakes of the most. Is it indicative of anything? Not necessarily. It could just be community engagement with no larger meaning, after all. But maybe it is hinting at Bandai Namco exploring options to revive these classic franchises by looking back to their glory days.

Whatever it is, we are unlikely to know any time soon. When we do find out, we’ll let you know, so stay tuned.

Ace Combat Infinity, the upcoming newest game in Namco Bandai’s long running air simulator and combat series, just got a new trailer, this one showcasing the online co-op missions in the game. The game looks like it might be pretty exciting, especially for series fans, and it might just spell a return to form for the series after the disappointing last installment.

Online Co-op Missions, meanwhile, are completely new to Ace Combat Infinity, which will involve 4v4 team matches (so it’s not really co-op); you have to work with your team to complete assigned missions before your enemy team does, meaning you can either choose to focus on trying to complete the assigned mission as soon as possible, or you can instead focus exclusively on annihilating your opponent so you get a clear field.

Ace Combat Infinity is a PlayStation 3 exclusive. The game will be made available on the PSN Store sometime later this year.

Namco Bandai’s flight simulation and air combat series Ace Combat has seen better days, but the upcoming PlayStation 3 exclusive, Ace Combat Infinity, looks pretty swell.

The upcoming free to play title, set on Earth, was formally announced last month, and it looks like a pretty good game, a return to form for the series that plummeted in quality after Fires of Liberation, the sixth game in the series, released as an Xbox 360 exclusive.

The trailer above shows the game in action, including several co-op missions, the customization options available to players within the game, and also a great scene with the pilots trying to take down a giant warship.

Ace Combat Infinity is a free to play game (a series first), the eighth game in the series, that is bound exclusively for the PlayStation 3 later this year. Stay tuned to GamingBolt, because we will have more coverage for you for this game.

The last game in the Ace Combat series was Assault Horizon, released in 2011 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 (eventually coming to PC), which purported a number of changes to the game to make it more up-close and personal in its combat. Of course, it was also one of the few Ace Combat games to take part on the real Earth and not the fictional location that has served as the setting for many other titles.

Could this be a next generation (or even cross-generation) Ace Combat title? Will Namco Bandai be taking a whole new approach or sticking to what works while making it prettier? Time will tell, so stay tuned for further updates.

Ace Combat Assault Horizon demo, available on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, has been downloaded more than 1.2 million times, Namco Bandai have announced.

In addition to these impressive download numbers, the Ace Combat series has sold more than 10 million units worldwide.

To celebrate these exciting accomplishments check out this brand new trailer which showcases the high octane story and explosive adventure that players will embark on when the game lands in stores next week.

Ace Combat Assault Horizon will be available in stores across North America for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on October 11, 2011.

Lets hope that Assualt Horizon will raise the bar even higher.