Air Combat

Air Combat is Namco's 1993 arcade flight game and the direct ancestor of the Ace Combat series. It runs on the Namco System 21 board, the first arcade hardware designed from the ground up for 3D polygons, and in the arcades of its day it represented the state of the art in flying — a large sit-down cabinet, a flight stick, and a screen full of genuine three-dimensional space.

The assignment is arcade-simple: shoot down six enemy aircraft before the timer runs out. Slow bombers are easy points; fast fighters chase you around and force you to manoeuvre. There is no story and no briefing-room drama — just you, the radar and the ticking clock. That rawness is the charm: a pure dogfight trainer condensed into the length of one credit.

At release it was an event. The graphics drew wide praise, the game earned a Best Graphics nomination in Japan's Gamest awards, and in American arcades Air Combat was the top-grossing new video game of October 1993 and the top-grossing deluxe cabinet that December. Polygonal flight simply had no competition at the time.

Seen with today's eyes, it is a skeleton of a game. The polygons are flat-shaded and untextured, the sky is empty, the content runs dry within minutes, and the dogfighting has none of the depth of later titles. Treat it as archaeology: this is where Namco learned everything it would later put to use in the 1995 PlayStation game Air Combat, from which the Ace Combat brand grew. As a monument to the beginnings of polygonal flight it is a fascinating exhibit — and still brisk fun for the length of one credit.

You can fly this piece of history on oldgame.cz right in your browser, with nothing to install.