Reprint: The Strange Real World of Ace Combat

This feature was originally commissioned by EGM and then picked up by Uppercut Crit following EGM's closure. It was published on June 30, 2020, Ace Combat's 25th anniversary. I sure would write this differently today! The content itself, though, has aged better than my prose. Soon we'll be grappling with what licensing from companies like Raytheon and Lockheed means for the next Ace Combat, which adopts recent Russo-Ukrainian war imagery and is set to be published amidst the Palestinian genocide, Israel's invasion of Lebanon, and the 2026 Iran war. I should probably get the inevitable The Wind Rises rewatch out of the way. 25 years ago today, Ace Combat launched on the PS1. The title would land in North America two months later as Air Combat, the name of the 1993 cabinet the game was based on. And as the console generations have since passed, Ace Combat has gone too in pursuit of ight. Appearing on everything from iOS and the Gameboy to Steam and the PS4, the past quarter century has…