Ace Combat team doing Wii dogfighter

By Robert Purchese Published 20 June, 2008

To tie in with new anime film.

Namco Bandai plans to release an anime-inspired Wii fighter-pilot game in Japan this autumn.

It's called Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces and is being made by the Ace Combat team, according to Dengeki Online (translated by GameLife).

The game will tie-in with an anime film called The Sky Crawlers, which in itself is based on a Japanese series of books based around some dogfighting pilots in a weird World War II-like setting.

The film is being made by Mamoru Oshii who did Ghost in the Shell, for those who like that sort of thing.

Namco Bandai will be creating its own storyline for Innocent Aces, mind you, and has the Wiimote handling throttle and the nunchuk as the stick control.

The first action-snaps look nice and clean with period planes sporting few missiles but lots of mounted cannon-fire for some up-close and personal battles.

No word on its Western whereabouts just yet.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (8) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • timpig #1 4 years ago

    wow.

    Am very excited about the film (yes...'I like that sort of thing'.....WTF is that meant to mean?), Oshii is one of the greatest film directors, anime or otherwise, working at the moment. Be interesting to see how the game turns out.

    read more about the film, and watch the teaser trailer, over on my blog.

  • Brogan #2 4 years ago

    Controls sound a little backward to me (may have to really tax myself and swap wii-mote and nun around) and could see it feeling like the flying equivalent of the wii wheel

  • InsoFox #3 4 years ago

    Neat!

  • FunkyAlchemist #4 4 years ago

    Stuff anime inspired dogfighting - why don't microsft resurrect combat flight simulator for the 360? Ace combat was all fine and dandy but unleashing missiles at distant radar blips was to dogfighting what an artillery simulator would be to fps. A WW1 or 2 era guns and cannon close in game would be great on this gen of machines.

  • HornedGod #5 4 years ago

    @FunkyAlchemist

    You'll be wanting to keep a beady eye out for 'IL-2: Sturmovik: Birds of Prey' then.

  • FunkyAlchemist #6 4 years ago

    @HornedGod

    Thanks - I hadn't seen that. You've made my day :) {edit: downloaded video preview and looks at screenshots - you've made my week}
    Edited by 1 at 20/06/08 @ 21:38

  • Razorus #7 4 years ago

    Ooh, count me interested. I love combat flight sims, but I'm always put off with the amount of crap on the HUD. Since this is anime-inspired, the action should be frenetic and faster-paced than Ace Combat.
    Also, there's a movie of Robotech being developed. Maybe a game tie-in will be good.
    Edited by 1 at 21/06/08 @ 12:26

  • YourMessageHere #8 4 years ago

    It stagggers me that the world, or at least Japan, is not already inundated with Macross arcadey flight-sims complete with transforming Valkyries. Even non-anime people are likely to be keen on the idea of a game in which you pilot jet planes that transform into robots.

    What little I've discovered of Sky Crawlers makes it look like the sort of thing I originally hoped Warhawk would be, before it lost it's SP component and metamorphosed into ersatz Battlefield, sort of Crimson Skies redone as anime with more imagination and with frequent nods to Last Exile. With any luck, this will be that game.