ACE is my all time favorite C64 flight sim/air combat game.
All the elements are there. Air to Air dogfights, Air to Ground and Air to Sea missions to complete. You start off at your airbase seated in your fighter jet, full tanks of fuel and fully armed with sidewinders, guns, chaff and bombs. There are several pilot skill levels to start your campaigns. From basic training through to experience level 9. The latter being a tough call with the enemy pilots really turning on the heat.
You may select between single pilot or pilot and weapons officer (with a 2nd player being able to work the guns, missiles bombs etc) whilst you concentrate on flying. You can also select between Night, Day, Winter or Summer that add a nice ‘feel’ to the game.
One of the really neat touches is the ability to refuel your fighter jet mid air. This in itself can be very challenging, having to maneuver your aircraft in behind the re-fueling tanker matching airspeed and altitude with precision. Another nice touch is the way your aircraft can be damaged by anti aircraft flak, missile hits etc; but still able to fly on and limp home to refuel and repair damage. Real seat of the pants stuff.
There is an in-flight map to see exactly where you are and the display of enemy positions. The artificial intelligence model is superb for a game of this vintage and the enemy fighter jocks are more than a match for experienced pilots. As with many flight simulators, landing can be tricky and is another worth while and challenging part of the game.
Flight controls are conventional and aside from joystick control of basic flight, banking, climb, descent you have to think about undercarriage, flaps, brakes, weaponry etc. The graphics are very, very good for a program of this vintage and really add to the overall atmosphere of the game. What really stands out for me though is the digitized speech! It’s awesome. You get a somewhat metallic sounding voice barking out commands and warnings like; ‘Pull up, Pull up’, ‘Missile Warning’, ‘Eject Eject’, ‘Low Altitude’. The overall sound effects are brilliant too with machine guns, explosions, roar of the jet engines, flak etc.
This really is a killer game and I can highly recommend it. It works flawlessly with CCS64 and takes me back to the days of my C64 and my very first flight simulator.
