To me, the YF-22 is and always will be the canon airframe for AC2 over the standard F-22. It was a massive bummer that AHL retconned it into a regular Raptor and we never got the true prototype back.

​That nostalgia alone made me grab this old 1/144 Trumpeter kit, and man... what a mistake. The kit is absolute garbage. It sat on my shelf of shame for literal years because almost nothing fit, seam lines were a nightmare, and the vertical rudders were straight up molded with the wrong angles/orientation. This thing just wanted to die in the box as if Phoenix himself double tapped it into a BINGO fireball.

​Eventually I figured I'd stop stressing rivet counting and just salvage it with a fun paint job. And honestly, what’s simpler than painting the whole thing red? So much easier than my last done Aurelian Viggen model.

​For the display base, I went with a little hangar setup. Lore-wise, I picture this as an early phase of the Zone of Endless project before the AI started relentlessly copying Phoenix’s combat data in the skies. It’s sitting in some dark, subterranean rebel hangar hooked up to diagnostic rigs while Grunder engineers run initial avionics calibrations and test the neural link algorithms before clearing the autonomous red devil for actual sortie.

​Pretty happy to finally have this cursed plastic done and off the bench.

Something my brother found, so i lowkey just took it cuz he didnt care for it.

Why are the explosions square?

Completely different shapes from one another

PSM in AC7 sure is something.

Got fired, at least we have 2 ace combat games coming this year (8 and 0) so, as we all said in December, self erasure postponed ( joking) 🥲

According to the director, AC8’s campaign will boast the highest volume of content in the series’ history. In many ways, it will exceed even the original Japanese version of Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere. Not to be confused with the heavily abridged international version, the domestic Ace Combat 3 boasted an ambitiously complex storyline with 52 missions, multiple endings, and numerous cutscenes packaged into two CDs.

Ace Combat 8, however, will outnumber Electrosphere when it comes to campaign missions, cinematics, and other content, according to Kono. While it tells a linear story unlike Ace Combat 3, Kono is confident the new entry will bring “the largest campaign in the history of the series.”

Edit: Kono himself has came out and clarified on a recent twitter post -

Let me provide some additional clarification regarding the recent interview in Shanghai.

When I mentioned that Ace Combat 8 features "the largest-scale campaign in the series," the "scale" here doesn't just refer to a comparison of the number of missions.
ACE8 has a linear campaign structure, but it's packed to the brim with a wealth of missions, cutscenes, cinematics, and various other elements.

I was referring to the overall volume and experience of the campaign, including all of those aspects, as "the largest scale in the series."

Some parts of the explanation may have been a bit hard to convey, so let me supplement it once more.

The campaign for ACE COMBAT 8: WINGS OF THEVE has received quite a lot of our focus and effort. Please look forward to it.

Localisation at its finest, lol

(Im sure the English account will probably say something different)

Edit: For context, I’m referring to the description for the plane, particularly for what’s in the second pic

Planes

Didn't remember seeing this here so if it has been posted, mods, please delete