Fans of dogfighting games just got another dose of good news. For 8 years, Ace Combat Infinity has been effectively locked away following its shutdown, no thanks to its always-online system. But thanks to a newly developed emulator workaround, PC owners can once again revisit Ace Combat Infinity and experience what was once thought lost for good.
A patch for a PlayStation 3 emulator on PC now lets players bypass the game’s original online checks and access the full campaign and Free Flight mode by setting up a local server. It’s not a perfect recreation of the original experience by any means, though. All multiplayer modes are still off the table, and the developer notes that the local server connections may occasionally drop.
Before you jump into your gaming chair, do note that you need to source your own Ace Combat Infinity copy and all of its prerequisite tools. No doubt it can be a bit of a headache, considering the game was only launched digitally without a physical release. Even so, it’s a major step toward preserving and re-experiencing the series’s most elusive entry.
Ace Combat Infinity was originally released in May 2014 as a PlayStation 3 exclusive. Unlike the previous games, it leaned heavily on online connectivity, blending eight intense campaign missions with 4-player cooperative sorties along with various PVP modes. Across its lifespan, the game featured over 64 playable aircraft, ranging from real-world fighters to conceptual planes like F-16XL or the iconic fictional ones such as the ASF-X Shinden. However, the servers were shut down in March 2018, and as you expect, it became the only Ace Combat game that’s completely unplayable. At least, until now.
More importantly, however, this breakthrough means that nearly the entire Ace Combat lineup — from the arcade remake Air Combat on original PlayStation, the Gameboy Advance spin-off, to Ace Combat 7 — is now accessible on PC in one way or another. Yep, that includes Ace Combat 6, which recently got a fanmade recompilation project. Of course, with Ace Combat 8 on the horizon, the timing couldn’t be more interesting. Keep GameObserver on your radar for more Ace Combat updates!
