Ace of Aces

Ace of Aces is a combat flight simulator developed by Artech Digital Entertainment and published in 1986 by three different companies: Accolade, U.S. Gold, and Tiertex Design Studios. It was released for the Amstrad CPC, Atari 8-bit family, Atari 7800, Commodore 64, MSX, MS-DOS, Sega Master System, and ZX Spectrum. Set in World War II, the player flies a RAF Mosquito long range fighter-bomber equipped with rockets, bombs and a cannon. Missions include destroying German fighter planes, bombers, V-1 flying bombs, U-boats, and trains. Ace of Aces received mixed reviews but went on to become one of the best-selling Commodore 64 video games published by Accolade.

Upon launching the game a menu screen with options to either practice or partake in a proper mission is shown. If the player decides to do the practice mode, they can choose whether to do dog fight training or a U-Boat or train bombing. When playing the practice mode, the enemies are less aggressive. There are five different view options — the cockpit, both left and right wings, the navigational map and the bomb bay — which can be accessed by using the keyboard or by double-tapping the fire button and moving the joystick to the desired direction. When in missions, the player controls a twin-engined balsa RAF Mosquito which is already airborne, mitigating the necessity of takeoff. When starting a mission, the player chooses what supplies they wish to bring, but the more the player brings the lower the maximum speed of the plane. At the end of missions, landing is not required and points are awarded according to how many enemies are shot down, along with the amount of unused fuel, bombs, and missiles. When missions are completed, the player can choose to combine two or more of the other missions to produce a mashup.

In a 1987 Compute! article, Ace of Aces was noted as Accolade's second best selling Commodore 64 game. The Commodore 64 version received mostly positive ratings and accumulated a MobyGames rating of 73 based on critic reviews. Compute!, along with other reviewers, praised the graphics and sound in Ace of Aces. ANALOG Computing preferred it to Infiltrator as an Atari 8-bit flight simulator. 1991 and 1993 Computer Gaming World surveys of strategy and war games gave it one and a half stars out of five, calling it "somewhat ahistorical". In issue 20 of Zzap!64, the reviewer said it was the best factual war simulation they had played. They compared it to Dambusters and said the playability in this was better. Desert Fox was also used as a comparison, which was referred to as "sometimes unbelievable". An article by the Computer and Video Games magazine published in 1986 said that it was another well-made and well-presented game by Accolade and continued to say that the action-packed gameplay would be able to keep "even the most critical computer pilot busy for some time to come". All four criteria were highly rated, with graphics getting a 10, along with sound, value and playability all getting an 8.