4Gamer's coverage of Kouno Kazutoki's G-STAR 2025 Ace Combat Retrospective

A lecture entitled "The Ace Combat Series: a 30 Year Journey" was held at the South Korean gaming convention G-STAR on 13 November, 2025. At this lecture, Mr. Kazutoki Kouno of Bandai Namco entertainment took stage with IGN Japan's Daniel Robson as host.

Mr. Kouno joined Namco in 1994. Following his debut on the tennis game Smash Court, he worked on the racing games Ridge Racer and R4 – RIDGE RACER TYPE 4. He's been involved with the arcade flight sim series Ace Combat for a very long time: from Ace Combat 2 in 1997, up to the newest release: Ace Combat 7 in 2019. He remains involved in that series as its "brand director."

30 years of an unchanging concept: "the protagonist is you"

According to Mr. Kouno, the reason why the series continues to be loved is that "for all these past 30 years, you've been the protagonist. It's made it possible to experience what it's like to become an ace pilot. The fact that this has never changed is why it's so beloved."

The visual component has continued to evolve dramatically, but this style of first person protagonist is unchanging. The player is in the cockpit as they become an ace pilot in the fictional world of "Strangereal" – and the core of this experience has been maintained.

Mr. Kouno explained the three pillars of Ace Combat.[1]

First: the sense that you are free to fly around unconstrained in a 360 degree environment with high quality visuals.
Second: the exhilaration of flowing from target to target at your own discretion (at any range, with any weapon, at any time).
Third: the sense of accomplishment brought by a story where, as you clear each mission, you establish your legend as an ace pilot: a hero who has overcome all adversity.

"These three pillars have remained largely the same for the past 30 years," Mr. Kouno claimed. However, as technology has advanced and opened up new modes of expression, they've turned those technologies into new techniques and used them to elevate that experience by leaps and bounds.

For example, being able to depict the environment in a more realistic manner on next generation platforms greatly benefits that sense of being free to fly around unconstrained. When new technology has come along, they've thought hard about what kind of benefits it might confer, and by so doing have pushed the series forward.

On the other hand, Mr. Kouno points to Ace Combat: Assault Horizon and Ace Combat Infinity as the two points when the series was in its deepest crisis.[2]

In the former, they determined to have the protagonist be not the player but a specific character, and the latter was essentially a free-to-play title with next to no narrative. Since in both cases they had altered the series concept, player opinions were mixed

The lesson Mr. Kouno drew from this experience was that "the creator will always become bored faster than their audience." He reflected: "our audience was still starving for a new narrative-driven Ace Combat, but as the people making it, we felt like we were simply doing the same thing over and over again. We ended up changing the series' whole identity." Mr. Kouno observed that this is a rather common occurrence not limited to Ace Combat alone.

The foundation of Strangereal as a setting

The setting of the Ace Combat series is known as "Strangereal" among fans. According to Mr. Kouno, many people mistake it for a flight simulator, but it is, in fact, a "flight shooting game," not a simulator.[3]

"Believability," Mr. Kouno emphatically stated using the English word, "is the degree to which the audience can believe in the world of Strangereal."[4] They had to construct a world where they could put fighters like the ones you'd see in real life on the backdrop of near future SF elements, and have their audience believe it all the same.

Moreover, the SF elements have to be carefully considered and researched, to the extent he says that they asked the Obayashi Corporation – a major construction company – about their plans for a space elevator.

Universal themes that connect the world

As to why the game is so loved the world over, Mr. Kouno stated "I believe that games reflect life." Just as one may encounter success and failure in life, so too in games may one encounter "mission clear" and "game over." The experience of profiting through repeated success and failure is a lot like life itself; games are a form of media through which one may experience life.

"The probability of you becoming an ace pilot is abysmal, but in a game, if you fail over and over, gradually improving, you can ultimate experience what it's like to be a success – as reinforced by the narrative. Mr. Kouno believes that this sensation is something fundamental: global and agnostic to the circumstances of one's birth.

At the end of the presentation, when asked by Mr. Robson about the next title, Mr. Kouno simply said "we're working on it." He'd already announced some years ago that they were working on a new game, and he touched on the foundation of Bandai Namco Aces as the developer (relevant article). "I participated in an online meeting just yesterday from here in South Korea, directing the new title," he said, elaborating on the situation. However, as he was unable to shed any light on the details, he only showed a plain white slide.

He also mused, however idly, about how he'd be interested in other works using Strangereal as a setting.[5] However, he'd want to avoid the impression of a mere spinoff. He explained his vision: "I'd like to figure out how to launch a new IP where like, you'd have this legit plan for an action/adventure game, and it'd look really intriguing, but if you look real close, you'd see that it was totally a game in the world of Ace Combat."

Ace Combat: a series which has maintained its concept unchanged for 30 years as it continues to improve the experience with changing technology. From Mr. Kouno's development philosophy, one can see the vital lessons learned from nurturing a long-beloved franchise. We look forward to the day when the new title in development is released.

Footnotes

1. You may recall that Kouno-san spoke about Ace Combat having three pillars at least as early as 2016,  but he names three different pillars: flight action, huge bosses, and rivals. However, you may also recall that he's spoken about these new pillars – flying around, freedom to plan your attack, being an ace – quite frequently as well.
2. I translated a thread Kouno-san wrote about his experience on ACAH way back in 2015. It's a very poor translation with at least one major mistake that I immediately spotted (he understands the feelings of his staff, as their leader, about wanting to somehow patch the game), but basically he points to a lack of clarity about the game's core concept as a fundamental mistake that compromised the game on a deeper level than just DFM mode (he makes no mention of the story for better or worse). It was a very bitter time for everyone involved. You can see the shadow of ACAH very clearly over his "three pillars."
   
3. A strange distinction in translation since the most common name for the genre is "arcade flight sim" in English, which I've used elsewhere in the article.
4. "Verisimilitude" is probably the English word he's looking for. This aligns with「ストレンジ、リアルな世界」– "an unfamiliar, yet real-feeling world" as the origin of "Strangereal." Note how narrow his concept of "Strangereal" is even today compared to the "lore" focus of Anglophone fandom. Incidentally, he tweeted back in 2015 about how he sees "Strangereal" as kinda embarrassing Engrish. You'll note that he doesn't actually use that word himself.
   
5. Project Aces did, in fact, sound out three ideas for games set in Strangereal through Famitsu back in 2007.

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When an Ace Combat announcement is imminent, Encyclopædia Strangereal reveals itself: first as a demon. As a demon, it uses basic Japanese skills to write serviceable translations of World News articles and Japanese press coverage – and then it dies. However, after a period of slumber,

Encycopædia Strangereal returns.

CAN YOU TAAAAKE IT ALL AWAAAAAYAY〜
CAN YOU TA-

-okay you get the idea.

Kouno-san had been tweeting about the process of preparing the materials for this presentation for a while, and I thought it might be handy to translate this snapshot of how he thinks of Ace Combat as a series to contextualize AC8 when it's finally unveiled for real. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's mostly the same sort of thing he's been talking about for the past decade, but if I had to pick out one new development, it's the increased emphasis on hyping up the player as they develop. He's mentioned this aspect before, but his talking points during AC7's press tour tended to emphasize the first two pillars.

The other thing that caught my eye is his musings on how technology can create new ways to emphasize the core pillars. He tweeted before about how PA's UE5 toolchain was having trouble accommodating tiny assets in huge environments, which puzzled my friends who use UE5. It may indicate some shift in how the engine is being used, but we'll see.

Aside from that, there aren't really any big insights here. I was hoping for something a little more in-depth. I've been reading old interviews and dev diaries for a different project, and Kouno-san's framework glosses over a lot of very important shifts in mindset ever since AC3 that I think have way better explanatory power for Ace Combat's success than the three things it has in common with almost every single one of its competitors. For instance, the development of the use of radio chatter from 3 to 04 to 5 is something they talk about repeatedly as being core to their aesthetic, experiential goals. It's no mistake that the one big technical overview ever done about the Ace Combat series is how its dialog processor works. Moreover, a fact conspicuously missing from discussions of Ace Combat authorship is that almost none of that dialog is actually written by credited "writer." This is only one example of many that I feel make this a missed opportunity.

Of course, Kouno-san has more important things to do than give lectures.

In any case, we'll be back when there's more.