"Canard wings and improved avionics have been added to the already agile Su-27, resulting in unmatched aerial combat capabilities befitting the name 'Super Flanker'."
— NamCollection museum description of the Su-35 Super Flanker in Ace Combat 2 (Acepedia, n.d.).
Soviet Hardware in the Skies of Usea: Russian Aircraft in Ace Combat 2 (1997)
Ace Combat 2, released in 1997 for the PlayStation by Namco, is a combat flight simulator set in the fictional continent of Usea — part of the alternate-Earth universe later formalized as "Strangereal." The player controls a mercenary pilot known as Phoenix, flying under the callsign Scarface 1 on behalf of the Unified Command, a coalition of pro-government forces fighting to suppress a military coup by the NA-P2700 faction. The game features 21 missions across a handcrafted hangar of 24 aircraft, ranging from entry-level attack jets to rare, high-performance fighters unlocked by progression.
Within that roster, Soviet and Russian-designed aircraft are not peripheral curiosities — they are structural pillars. The MiG-21 and MiG-29 represent the accessible lower-to-mid tiers; the MiG-31 and Su-25 populate the Extra roster as powerful alternatives for veteran players; and the Su-35 Super Flanker occupies the position of the single most capable fighter available on a standard playthrough. Beyond the player's hangar, three further Soviet designs appear exclusively as enemy units: the Su-37 Terminator making its franchise debut as a named enemy ace, the Yak-141 Freestyle deployed by rebel forces in a single mission, and the Mi-24 Hind gunship appearing as a ground target. Together, eight Soviet and Russian designs populate the game — more than any other single national tradition in the roster. This document catalogues each one and examines what their placement within Namco's design logic communicates about the portrayal of Russian military aviation in late-1990s interactive media.
The Soviet Tier Structure: From Fishbed to Flanker
Ace Combat 2's hangar is structured as an informal progression tree: the player begins with limited, inexpensive aircraft and earns in-game currency through mission performance to purchase progressively more capable machines. Soviet and Russian designs appear at nearly every rung of this ladder, giving them an unusual breadth of presence that no other national aviation tradition in the game can match. The following table lists all eight Soviet and Russian aircraft across both rosters and the enemy pool, with key parameters drawn from the official Namco guide book and the Acepedia wiki (Acepedia, n.d.):
| Aircraft | Roster | Unlock (Normal) | Price | Role | Max Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MiG-21 Fishbed | Extra only | Start (Extra) | $40,000 | Fighter | 1,800 km/h |
| MiG-29 Fulcrum | Normal & Extra | Mission 06 | $110,000 | Fighter | 2,200 km/h |
| Su-25 Frogfoot | Extra only | Mission 05 (Extra) | $105,000 | Attacker | 1,400 km/h |
| MiG-31 Foxhound | Extra only | Mission 10 (Extra) | $160,000 | Fighter | 2,500 km/h |
| Su-35 Super Flanker | Normal only | Mission 13 | $200,000 | Fighter | 2,400 km/h |
| Su-37 Terminator | Enemy ace (unplayable) | — | — | Fighter | — |
| Yak-141 Freestyle | Enemy only (unplayable) | — | — | VTOL Fighter | — |
| Mi-24 Hind | Enemy only (unplayable) | — | — | Attack Helicopter | — |
The span is deliberate. From the MiG-21 — the cheap, Cold War workhorse placed as the Extra roster's starting option — to the Su-35 at the top of the Normal game's purchasable hierarchy, Soviet designs frame the entire experience. A player who opts exclusively for Soviet aircraft could, in theory, climb the full progression arc without ever boarding a Western jet.
The Mi-24 Hind: Soviet Rotary-Wing Power
Status: Enemy only — unplayable. Appears as a ground target in enemy missions. Listed in the game's roster as "MIL-24," which is an error; the correct designation is Mil Mi-24.
The Mi-24 Hind is the only helicopter in Ace Combat 2's Soviet and Russian inventory, and the only rotary-wing aircraft of any nationality to appear in the game as a combat unit. Developed by the Mil Moscow Helicopter Plant and entering Soviet service in the late 1970s, the Hind is a combination gunship and troop transport with no direct NATO counterpart — its ability to carry eight combat troops while simultaneously operating as a heavily armed attack platform gives it a tactical flexibility that Western attack helicopters like the AH-64 Apache were not designed to replicate (Acepedia, n.d.). Russian pilots referred to it as the "flying tank," a nickname that captures both its formidable armament payload and its reputation for absorbing punishment in combat.
In Ace Combat 2, the Mi-24 appears as an enemy ground unit, functioning as a surface target for the player to destroy rather than an aerial combatant. This is an accurate reflection of how the Hind operates in combined arms warfare — as a close air support and anti-armour asset operating at low altitude — and it is also a meaningful contrast to the way Soviet fixed-wing aircraft are represented elsewhere in the game. Where the MiG and Sukhoi designs are coded as prestigious, desirable, and performance-driven, the Mi-24 exists as a tactical instrument: a weapon system to be neutralized, carrying none of the romantic weight of the Flanker family.
The Hind's inclusion is nonetheless significant for the Archive. The Mi-24 was, by 1997, one of the most combat-proven Soviet designs in existence, having accumulated an extensive operational record in Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia, and a dozen other conflicts. Its appearance in the rebel inventory of Ace Combat 2 draws on this real-world pedigree: the Hind is there not because it is glamorous but because any credible depiction of a post-Soviet military force — even a fictional one — would plausibly have access to it.
The MiG-21 Fishbed
Status: Playable — Extra roster only, available by default as the starting aircraft.
The MiG-21 Fishbed is the cheapest aircraft in Ace Combat 2 at $40,000, available by default on the Extra roster as a direct replacement for the F-4 Phantom. Its stats are modest: Power 40, Mobility 30, a top speed of 1,800 km/h. In practical terms, it is an underpowered starting option for an advanced playthrough — a deliberate handicap for players who want to challenge themselves.
Yet the MiG-21's inclusion is symbolically significant. The Fishbed was the most widely produced supersonic jet fighter in history, built in over 11,000 examples and flown by more than 60 countries. By placing it as the Extra roster's default entry point — the plane you begin with before you can afford anything better — Namco implicitly acknowledges the aircraft's canonical status as the universal baseline of Soviet military aviation. The MiG-21 is not there because it is powerful. It is there because any honest inventory of Soviet airpower must include it.
The MiG-29 Fulcrum: The Reliable Middle Ground
Status: Playable — available on both Normal and Extra rosters.
Unlocked after Mission 06 on both Normal and Extra rosters, the MiG-29 Fulcrum represents the game's first serious investment in Soviet hardware at the mid-range price point of $110,000. Its statistics are balanced rather than spectacular — Power 70, Mobility 50, a respectable Climbing Ability of 80 — making it a credible fighter at the stage of the game when it becomes available, competitive with the Western F-14 Tomcat that trails it by a single mission's unlock gap and $10,000 in cost.
The MiG-29 is also, crucially, the first Soviet aircraft available to a player on a standard Normal playthrough, and it arrives at precisely the moment the game's mission difficulty begins to escalate. For many players in 1997, this was likely their first extended engagement with a Soviet aircraft as a primary combat tool rather than an enemy model. Its solid mid-tier performance normalizes the Fulcrum as a dependable workhorse — not exotic, not fearsome, simply functional. The MiG-29 earns no mythology from Ace Combat 2; what it earns is credibility.
The MiG-31 Foxhound
Status: Playable — Extra roster only, unlocked after Mission 10.
The MiG-31 Foxhound is, by a considerable margin, the most mechanically formidable Soviet aircraft in Ace Combat 2. Unlocked in the Extra roster after Mission 10, priced at $160,000, it holds the highest Defense rating in the entire game at 90 — a value no other aircraft approaches — and a Climbing Ability of 100, also unmatched. Its top speed of 2,500 km/h ties it with the F-15S as the fastest aircraft in the roster. Its Air-to-Air rating of 90 and absorbability classification of "Very Heavy" complete the picture of a machine built for survivability and altitude dominance above all else (Acepedia, n.d.).
In real life, the MiG-31 was developed in the 1970s as a direct response to the American SR-71 Blackbird and low-flying cruise missiles, designed to intercept targets at extreme altitudes and speeds that the aging MiG-25 could not reliably engage. Its phased-array radar, the Zaslon, was among the first of its type ever fitted to a production fighter, giving it a genuine beyond-visual-range capability that was genuinely advanced for its era. Ace Combat 2 honors this heritage precisely: the MiG-31 in the game is not a dogfighter — its Mobility rating of only 30 reflects that — but a specialist interceptor of unparalleled reach and endurance, a design built for a very specific job and devastating within those parameters.
The Su-25 Frogfoot
Status: Playable — Extra roster only, unlocked after Mission 05.
The Su-25 Frogfoot appears in the Extra roster as a direct structural replacement for the A-10 Thunderbolt II, unlocked after Mission 05. The symmetry is pointed: both aircraft are subsonic, heavily armored ground attack platforms designed for close air support, and the game treats them as interchangeable counterparts — the American and Soviet solutions to the same tactical problem. The Su-25's stats reflect this: low Power (30), maximum Defense (80), low Climbing Ability (20), and a top speed of 1,400 km/h — virtually a mirror image of the A-10's profile. Its Air-to-Ground rating of 90 is the highest of any Soviet aircraft in the roster.
This one-to-one pairing of the Su-25 with the A-10 is a clean example of the implicit Cold War symmetry that runs through Ace Combat 2's aircraft design: for every Western platform, a Soviet equivalent exists in roughly the same role and tier. The game does not editorialize about which is superior; it presents both, assigns them equivalent functions, and lets the player choose sides.
The Su-35 Super Flanker: Apex of the Normal Roster
Status: Playable — Normal roster only, unlocked after Mission 13. The canonical personal aircraft of protagonist Scarface 1.
The Su-35 Super Flanker is the pivot around which Ace Combat 2's Russian aircraft content turns. Unlocked after completing Mission 13 ("Power Play") on Normal difficulty and priced at $200,000, it occupies the second-highest cost bracket of any Normal roster aircraft — exceeded only by the fictional YF-22 and YF-23. Its statistics are correspondingly imposing: Power 90, Defense 60, Mobility 80, Stability 70, Climbing Ability 90, with an 80/80 split across Air-to-Air and Air-to-Ground roles. Its top speed of 2,400 km/h makes it the fastest Soviet aircraft in the game and places it comfortably among the fastest aircraft overall. It also carries the largest missile load of any fighter-class aircraft in the Normal roster: 80 missiles, matching the heavy attacker load-outs of the A-10 and Su-25 (Acepedia, n.d.).
What distinguishes the Su-35's placement from mere statistical prestige is its narrative role. In the game's canonical framing, the Su-35 Super Flanker is the personal aircraft of Phoenix himself — Scarface 1, the player's own avatar. The opening cinematic depicts Phoenix arriving in his Flanker to rescue a wingman flying an F-22, an image that establishes a clear hierarchy: the Russian aircraft saves the American one. This visual inversion, subtle though it is, positions the Su-35 not as a hostile symbol but as the instrument of the hero, a protector rather than an adversary.
The aircraft's real-world counterpart adds an additional layer of resonance. In reality, the Su-35 Super Flanker corresponds to the Su-27M (factory designation T-10M), a programme launched in the Soviet era to develop a genuinely multirole successor to the pure air superiority Su-27. With the dissolution of the USSR, the designation was changed to Su-35, and the programme struggled through the financial chaos of the early 1990s. Only around seventeen airframes were built, the design never achieving series production (MILAVIA, n.d.). By the time Ace Combat 2 was released in 1997, the Su-35 "Super Flanker" was a known prototype — impressive enough on paper to generate genuine Western interest, but not yet the operational force it would have needed to be to dominate real-world airspace. Namco, like other studios before and after them, elected to treat the prototype's theoretical ceiling as its factual performance floor.
Unlock: Complete Mission 13 — "Power Play" · Price: $200,000 · Role: Fighter · PWR: 90 · DEF: 60 · MOB: 80 · STA: 70 · CLI: 90 · A2A: 80 · A2G: 80 · Max Speed: 2,400 km/h · Missiles: 80 · Flight Time: 20 min · Absorbability: Normal
The Su-37 Terminator: A Shadow Over the Roster
Status: Enemy ace only — unplayable. Appears in the game's HUD as "S35," a designation error that conflates it with the Su-35 Super Flanker.
The Su-37 Terminator makes its franchise debut in Ace Combat 2 in the one role that most effectively communicates awe: as an enemy the player cannot become. It is not available for purchase on any roster. It cannot be unlocked. It exists only as an adversary — a named ace's aircraft, encountered in the field and destroyed, but never possessed.
This is a deliberate and significant design choice. Namco had access to the Su-37's real-world profile — the thrust-vectoring Flanker derivative, the single prototype designated "711 White," first flown in 1996, one year before the game's release (MILAVIA, n.d.). By placing it beyond the player's reach, the game assigns it a mythological register that even the Su-35 does not fully claim: it is the aircraft that exists above the ceiling of what is accessible, the thing that remains other regardless of how far the player progresses. The Su-37's later appearances in Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies — where it finally becomes playable and is adopted by the elite Yellow Squadron antagonists — confirm that this was always its intended narrative function in the series: the embodiment of Russian aviation pushed past its achievable limits.
The HUD misidentification — labelling the Su-37 as "S35" — is a minor but telling detail. The Su-37 was still so new in 1997 that Namco's data on it was incomplete, the aircraft having only flown for the first time in April 1996. The designation confusion between Su-35 and Su-37 reflects the real-world ambiguity of the period: the Su-37 was publicly known primarily as a Su-35 testbed fitted with thrust-vectoring nozzles, and the boundary between the two designations was not yet clearly settled in Western sources. The game captured the aircraft's existence before the nomenclature fully crystallized.
The aircraft's real designation history reinforces its mythological status. Like the Su-35 Super Flanker before it, the Su-37 was born of the same Su-27M lineage — the final pre-production T-10M-11 airframe, converted to test thrust-vectoring control technology, eventually given its own designation. In the real world, it remained a single demonstrator, never entering service. In Ace Combat 2, it is already beyond the player's grasp. The game and reality arrive, by different roads, at the same conclusion: the Su-37 belongs to a category of things you can encounter but not keep.
The Yak-141 Freestyle: A VTOL Ghost in the Rebel Inventory
Status: Enemy only — unplayable. Deployed by rebel forces in a single mission; also viewable in the Model Display screen.
The Yak-141 Freestyle occupies an unusual niche in Ace Combat 2's Soviet inventory: it is the only aircraft in the game's entire enemy pool to represent a specifically naval VTOL tradition, and one of only two Soviet designs (alongside the Mi-24) that the player will never be able to pilot under any circumstances. The Yak-141 appears in a single mission, stationed at Faith Park Gorge alongside a rebel missile silo — four aircraft deployed by the NA-P2700 coup forces as part of their defensive screen (Acepedia, n.d.).
In the real world, the Yakovlev Yak-141 was a supersonic VTOL fighter developed for the Soviet Navy as a replacement for the earlier Yak-38, intended to operate from Kiev-class carriers as a fleet defence fighter. It first flew in March 1987, set several VTOL world records, and was publicly displayed at the 1992 Farnborough Airshow — one of the final gestures of the Soviet military-industrial complex before financial collapse forced Yakovlev to cancel the programme entirely in August 1991, with only four prototypes completed (Wikipedia, n.d.). The aircraft was never operationally deployed and never entered production. It remains one of the more poignant Soviet aviation dead-ends: a genuine technological achievement cancelled not by engineering failure but by the collapse of the state that commissioned it.
Namco's decision to include it as an enemy unit in a single mission — rather than a purchasable aircraft or even a recurring threat — respects this limited real-world footprint while still acknowledging the design's existence. The Yak-141 in Ace Combat 2 is a footnote, but a historically literate one. Its presence signals that Namco's research extended beyond the obvious Flanker variants to reach into the more obscure corners of Soviet aviation history.
Cold War Symmetry and the Soviet Aircraft Trope
Taken together, the Soviet and Russian aircraft in Ace Combat 2 constitute a coherent and internally consistent vision of what Soviet aviation represented to a Japanese game developer in 1997: a parallel tradition of equal scope and seriousness to the Western one, organized along the same strategic logic but producing different solutions. The game's roster is built on Cold War symmetry — the Su-25 mirrors the A-10, the MiG-29 competes with the F-16 and F-14, the MiG-31 occupies the same rarefied interceptor tier as the YF-22 prototype. Soviet aircraft are not exoticized as curiosities; they are integrated into the same economic and strategic framework as their Western counterparts, their strengths and weaknesses assessed in the same terms.
Where the Soviet lineup departs from this symmetry is at the very top. The Su-35 Super Flanker, as Scarface 1's canonical aircraft, is not merely the best Soviet option — it is the protagonist's personal choice in a roster that includes the F-14, the F/A-18E, and the YF-22. Phoenix, the game's hero, flies Russian. That fact is neither explained nor emphasized; it simply is. In 1997, two years after Russia had officially ceased to be the adversary on paper, this was a genuinely unusual creative position to take — and Namco took it without apparent hesitation.
Conclusion
Ace Combat 2 contains more Soviet and Russian aircraft than any other national tradition in its roster, and distributes them across every tier and function the game offers. The MiG-21 anchors the Extra roster's baseline; the MiG-29 provides the Normal game's first credible Soviet option; the Su-25 and MiG-31 offer specialist Extra alternatives of genuine power; and the Su-35 Super Flanker crowns the Normal playthrough as the best purchasable aircraft and the hero's own machine. In the enemy pool, three further designs extend the Soviet presence beyond the player's reach: the Su-37 Terminator as the elite ace's mount, the Yak-141 as a historically precise footnote, and the Mi-24 as the practical, combat-worn ground instrument of a rebel force plausibly equipped from Soviet surplus.
For the ROMANOV Archive, Ace Combat 2 is a significant document. It demonstrates that the serious, research-grounded integration of Soviet aviation hardware into Japanese interactive media was already well established in the mid-1990s, pre-dating the more explicit romanticization visible in later franchise entries. The game treats Soviet aircraft not as threats to be overcome but as tools to be mastered — and, at the very top of the hierarchy, as the instrument of the hero himself. Eight designs, six decades of Soviet aviation history, and a consistent refusal to reduce any of them to caricature: that is the record Ace Combat 2 leaves for this Archive.
Ace Combat 2
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco / Sony Computer Entertainment (EU)
Designer: Masanori Kato
Release: JP: May 30, 1997 · NA: August 21, 1997 · EU: October 24, 1997
Platform: PlayStation
Genre: Air combat simulation
Ace Combat 2 is the second entry in Namco's Ace Combat franchise and the sequel to Air Combat. Set on the fictional continent of Usea, it places the player in the role of mercenary pilot Phoenix (callsign: Scarface 1), tasked with suppressing a continent-wide military coup. The game features 21 missions and a hangar of 24 real-world and prototype aircraft, with progression unlocking increasingly capable jets. It is the first Ace Combat title to feature named enemy ace pilots and branching mission paths.
References
- Acepedia. (n.d.). Ace Combat 2/Aircraft. Ace Combat Wiki. https://acecombat.fandom.com/wiki/Ace_Combat_2/Aircraft
- Acepedia. (n.d.). Su-35 Super Flanker. Ace Combat Wiki. https://acecombat.fandom.com/wiki/Su-35_Super_Flanker
- Acepedia. (n.d.). Su-37 Terminator. Ace Combat Wiki. https://acecombat.fandom.com/wiki/Su-37_Terminator
- Acepedia. (n.d.). Yak-141 Freestyle. Ace Combat Wiki. https://acecombat.fandom.com/wiki/Yak-141_Freestyle
- Acepedia. (n.d.). Mi-24 Hind. Ace Combat Wiki. https://acecombat.fandom.com/wiki/Mi-24_Hind
- Acepedia. (n.d.). Phoenix. Ace Combat Wiki. https://acecombat.fandom.com/wiki/Phoenix
- Acepedia. (n.d.). Ace Combat 2. Ace Combat Wiki. https://acecombat.fandom.com/wiki/Ace_Combat_2
- MILAVIA. (n.d.). Sukhoi Su-27M (Su-35) "Super Flanker". https://www.milavia.net/aircraft/su-35_su-27m/su-35_su-27m.htm
- Namco. (1997). Ace Combat 2 [Video game]. Namco.
- Wikipedia. (n.d.). Ace Combat 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ace_Combat_2
- Wikipedia. (n.d.). Yakovlev Yak-141. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakovlev_Yak-141
- Wikipedia. (n.d.). Mil Mi-24. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil_Mi-24