Ace Combat 04 Marks 25th Anniversary, ACE8 Due October 2026
September 13, 2001 marks the day Namco, now Bandai Namco Entertainment, released Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies on the PlayStation 2. As of today, the flight-shooting title has reached its 25th anniversary milestone. The series is known for letting players pilot realistically rendered fighter jets through exhilarating dogfights, a formula that helped define the genre. Per the source, the next entry in the franchise, Ace Combat 8 (ACE8), is scheduled to launch on October 2, 2026.
On the PS2, the development team could render weapons and terrain with far more detail than in earlier entries. Ace Combat 04 became the first game in the series to feature real-world aircraft under officially acquired licensing. Rather than pursuing a strict flight-simulator approach, however, the game adopted a fictional setting known as Strangereal. Real aircraft from various nations still fly in formation and engage in dogfights, but the conflict depicted is the Continental War between fictional countries, a structure the source describes as quintessentially Ace Combat.
The game’s signature mission, Mission 8 “Shattered Skies,” tasks players with defending the Comona Space Base, and every enemy present is an aircraft, making it a pure dogfight scenario. Players face the enemy ace unit known as the Yellow Squadron, while in-mission radio chatter mixes praise from allies with fear from foes. As the campaign progresses toward the final mission, the player grows to lead the Mobius Squadron, symbolized by a ribbon emblem matching their own aircraft. By that point, the weakened enemy forces react in confusion to the ribbon-marked attackers.
Between missions, the story unfolds through illustrations and narration in a picture-story style, told from the perspective of a boy living in the neutral country San Salvacion. Notably, he witnesses the Yellow Squadron rather than the player, and as the player succeeds, that squadron loses comrades and retreats. Direction and script were handled by Sunao Katabuchi, known for Black Lagoon and In This Corner of the World, who also wrote Ace Combat 8. The source notes that due to aircraft licensing, Ace Combat 04 has never been ported or remastered, so revisiting it means finding the original PS2 version. The shared Strangereal continuity, however, makes the wait for Ace Combat 8 all the more intriguing.
