Ace of Aces

Ace of Aces is a World War II-era combat flight simulation in which the player takes the controls of a British Mosquito bomber and carries out missions ranging from torpedoing ships and bombing ground targets to dogfights with German fighters. The game came out on the Commodore 64 in the mid-1980s and was created by Artech Digital Entertainments, a studio that specialized in simulation and strategy titles and looked for ways to convey the feeling of real combat flight on limited hardware.

A distinctive feature of the game is the split of attention between the cockpit view through the gunsight and the view of the onboard instruments, between which the player switches, requiring constant alternation of focus between aiming and monitoring altitude, speed, and fuel. This system made Ace of Aces a more demanding and realistic experience than was typical for eight-bit computers in the mid-1980s, while also distinguishing it from simpler arcade flight shooters where it was enough to aim and pull the trigger. Every mission also demands a different approach depending on the type of target, whether it's a slow-moving ship at sea or a fast fighter in the air.

On the C64 the game enjoyed a decent reception thanks to the combination of accessible controls and surprising depth for its time – the player has to learn to judge the distance and speed of the target, not just aim and shoot. Even with simple graphics, it managed to evoke the atmosphere of night raids and torpedo attacks at sea better than a number of visually more ambitious games. Today Ace of Aces is remembered as an interesting attempt to bring more realistic flight tactics into an accessible arcade package, and its control scheme is known to have later inspired other combat simulations of the 1980s that tried to combine multiple views into a single control scheme and give the player a real sense of responsibility for the aircraft's crew.

Why play: For fans of more realistic flight tactics in an accessible arcade package – judging the distance and speed of a target rather than simply aiming and shooting gives Ace of Aces a surprising depth that still holds up today.