I refuse to believe Metal Hawk has no connection to ace combat. Yes, I might have come up with nothing having spent and unreasonable amount of time looking for interviews and pouring over the Hamster stream covering the game, and come up with nary a shared member of staff, and yes it's a helicopter game - but you cannot convince me otherwise. So much of what makes Ace Combat what it is - all here. Sweeping in and out of the clouds on bombing runs, dodging SAMs, dogfighting, improbably large airplanes and a wonderful soundtrack.
Metal Hawk really just plays like an early Ace combat where every mission is one of those "get x points before the time runs out", albeit with far more arcade-y sensibilities. No mission gives you a timer more than 2 minutes, you die in a single hit, and the Metal Hawk itself jumps in and out like a flea, diving from maximum to minimum height within a second for bombing runs in what is about the most extreme sprite scaling i've seen in a game.
Metal Hawk's control is definetly the most contentious part of the game, having being built originally for a motion simulator cabinet with two sticks, and even though in the recent Arcade Archives release Hamster have gone to a lot of effort in making it configurable and making it adapt to twin sticks (the joysticks on the cab were analogue so this is fine), it's a bit of a cludge. But the more you get to grips with it, the initial clunkiness that you might feel gives way to a gloriously powerful movement system. In something that makes zero sense dont think about it, the Metal Hawk's movement speed scales heavily with altittude, so to dodge the onslaught of turrets and planes whilst keeping your barrage accurate, you need to constantly flick in and out of high and low altitude to keep yourself alive and finish your assault in time. The controls are a bit weird but when you get good at them it's a wonderful feeling, dancing among the clouds and the barrage.
Oh, and the whole time Shinji Hosoe jams out in the background. The soundtrack is lower tempo than you'd imagine, a bit like songs tend to be in Ace Combat outside of the climactic missions, which really suits the game well -im a particular fan of "BGM 4" - and all the while lovely Seiyuu Maya Okamoto confirms your kills and eggs you on. It makes for an almost calming tone that really blends well with getting into a flow state with the controls and action.
The whole thing is a joy. Technically amazing looking with it's bonkers sprite scaling, a truly interesting control experience that rewards mastery, and all the fun that comes with Ace Combat's atmosphere and charm put into the world of arcade sensibilities and pacing. It's fast paced, quite hard and in what was in retrospect a relative lull in Namco's output, as exceptional if not better than their legendary titles of the early 80s. A tiny production run of those motion siulator Cabinets and being kinda funky to port/emulate has kept it in the shadows for a long time now, but it truly is one of Namco's greatest games.
If you intend on trying metal hawk, definetly go for the Arcade Archives version. There's a lot of good QOL stuff in how they've implmented the controls which goes a long way to making Metal Hawk play fantastically on a modern system. And it's so worth it - if Metal Hawk actually were an ace combat game, there would be a very real argument for it to be the best one.
Metal Hawk really just plays like an early Ace combat where every mission is one of those "get x points before the time runs out", albeit with far more arcade-y sensibilities. No mission gives you a timer more than 2 minutes, you die in a single hit, and the Metal Hawk itself jumps in and out like a flea, diving from maximum to minimum height within a second for bombing runs in what is about the most extreme sprite scaling i've seen in a game.
Metal Hawk's control is definetly the most contentious part of the game, having being built originally for a motion simulator cabinet with two sticks, and even though in the recent Arcade Archives release Hamster have gone to a lot of effort in making it configurable and making it adapt to twin sticks (the joysticks on the cab were analogue so this is fine), it's a bit of a cludge. But the more you get to grips with it, the initial clunkiness that you might feel gives way to a gloriously powerful movement system. In something that makes zero sense dont think about it, the Metal Hawk's movement speed scales heavily with altittude, so to dodge the onslaught of turrets and planes whilst keeping your barrage accurate, you need to constantly flick in and out of high and low altitude to keep yourself alive and finish your assault in time. The controls are a bit weird but when you get good at them it's a wonderful feeling, dancing among the clouds and the barrage.
Oh, and the whole time Shinji Hosoe jams out in the background. The soundtrack is lower tempo than you'd imagine, a bit like songs tend to be in Ace Combat outside of the climactic missions, which really suits the game well -im a particular fan of "BGM 4" - and all the while lovely Seiyuu Maya Okamoto confirms your kills and eggs you on. It makes for an almost calming tone that really blends well with getting into a flow state with the controls and action.
The whole thing is a joy. Technically amazing looking with it's bonkers sprite scaling, a truly interesting control experience that rewards mastery, and all the fun that comes with Ace Combat's atmosphere and charm put into the world of arcade sensibilities and pacing. It's fast paced, quite hard and in what was in retrospect a relative lull in Namco's output, as exceptional if not better than their legendary titles of the early 80s. A tiny production run of those motion siulator Cabinets and being kinda funky to port/emulate has kept it in the shadows for a long time now, but it truly is one of Namco's greatest games.
If you intend on trying metal hawk, definetly go for the Arcade Archives version. There's a lot of good QOL stuff in how they've implmented the controls which goes a long way to making Metal Hawk play fantastically on a modern system. And it's so worth it - if Metal Hawk actually were an ace combat game, there would be a very real argument for it to be the best one.