Customer Reviews

Aces: Complete Collector's Edition

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Ask anyone who was into flight simulators in the 1990's and invariably some of the games in this collection will come up, notably Red Baron and Aces of the Pacific. The games were very fun and were largely "flyable" right out of the box, including A-10 Tank Killer, which is a far cry from this series main same-era counterpart Falcon 3.0 (which had a HUGE manual and made me think one required actual jet fighter training to fly).

Red Baron was the first, premiering around 1992 and took the player on a no-holds barred biplane fighter tour of WW1. The game allowed the player to take on a campaign route (allowing you to enter the fray at war's start flying primitive fighters) all the way to the end of the Great War, when the skies were ruled by the Red Baron himself. Or you could enter a sort of "instant action" mode and choose your planes and those of your enemies and take off into your custom made dogfight. After accumulating a set amount of kills and attaining the rank of Ace one could even give their aircraft custom paint jobs, something that added to the level of enjoyment. The game remained the benchmark by which all WW1 flight simulators were measured for many years after it's release.

The next to hit the scene was Aces of the Pacific, a game which brought the player to the Pacific Theater of WW2. Players could join the US Navy, US Army Air Corps, or Imperial Japanese Navy. I've found few WW2 flight simulators that were as enjoyable as this, especially the campaign mode. Historic battles could be flown, including flying the ill-fated attack of Torpedo Squadron 8 at the Battle of Midway to the recreation of Lieutenants Taylor and Welsh's historic defense of the northern Hawaiian skies during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The game came with an absolutely fantastic expansion pack based around the assumption that instead of dropping the atomic bombs the US opted for a land invasion of Japan. The pack included several new aircraft, notably the F7F Tigercat, the vaunted F8F Bearcat, and allowed the first-ever US jet fighter, the P-80 Shooting Star.

Aces over Europe continued the tradition by letting the player fly a similar campaign system in the European theater, starting with the RAF, USAAC or the German Luftwaffe. The attention to detail was great, and added was the ability to attack mobile ground targets, like armored trains.

This series of games kept me well-occupied for the better part of the 90's until Air Warrior III finally came along and ripped me away. It had an unequaled combination of fun, history, and ease of play that sadly remains without match in many such games today. You'll never see a set of games like this again in today's age of highly technical and "ultra-realistic" flight sims, more reason to experience such a great collection now.