ACE 2

You climb into the cockpit of a fighter jet and immediately realize there's no room for error here. ACE 2 keeps you gripped to the joystick, where every second counts and every engine shutdown could be your last. The computer opponent won't let you breathe — it flies, shoots, maneuvers like a beast that knows you can't.

It's a flight simulator with a lean toward action entertainment, unfolding over a pixelated landscape. You're flying in a realistically modeled fighter, completing missions and pretending you understand all those instruments in the cockpit. The game doesn't want to be just fun — it wants to instill something of the authenticity of piloting, even though on screen it's only measured in dozens of colored dots. You target enemies, defend against their attacks, orient yourself in space, and try to make it home.

The controls demand a certain skill and patience. The joystick has to be precise, because the game forgives few mistakes. Pull up, drop altitude, the right angle — it all has to come together. There's no undo button when you think you've gotten yourself in a mess. Suddenly you see why the older generation thought the game was hard. Physics and inertia force you to think ahead. It's not about spraying fire like crazy; it's about flying smart.

ACE 2 was among those titles that showed what could be wrung out of the DOS box if developers really put in the effort. It's not the prettiest game in the world — the terrain texture below you is more of a hint than an actual world — but that physics, that noisy cockpit with effects, that tension when you take a hit from behind? That was new and exciting in the nineties. Now, playing it again, I feel a bit of nostalgia mixed with gratitude that modern games made things easier.

It'll suit you if you love retro sims and aren't turned off by difficulty. If you enjoy the feeling of sitting in a plane without much comfort, this is yours. You can try it in a browser with an emulator — and yes, you'll find out that your reflexes aren't what they were when you were eighteen.