Re-Pete: Guide-ing Light

Thanks to Steel Collectibles, I finally completed a series of strategy guides that I’ve been hoping to collect for awhile now: the Ace Combat series of guides, starting with Ace Combat 2 from 1997 and capping with Ace Combat Zero from 2006.

The arrival of the Ace Combat Zero guide today is especially meaningful, since that’s my favorite game in the entire series. It was also the guide that’s eluded me for the longest time. I’ve played the game so much that a guide seems almost unnecessary at this point, but it’s not always about getting help beating a game.

See, strategy guides are repositories of information for games. Sure, they have maps, hints, and walkthroughs… but they also contain more details on a game’s characters, setting, story, vehicles, weapons, and more. They’re like well-detailed instruction manuals, if that makes sense. Many people who have bought strategy guides over the years have done so for the assistance in getting through a game that they provide. For me, it’s about the extra stuff. They’re fun to read through for me, and infuse me with knowledge about the games they cover that I might not have previously had.

There was a period of time, mainly from about 1997-2005, when buying a strategy guide was part of buying a new game. Some stores incentivized buying games and their strategy guides together by discounting the guide by a certain amount— and that deal was often enough for me to bite. Buying guides with RPGs was standard operating procedure, but I tried to pick them up for other games, too.

Unfortunately, many of those guides got lost as my life became pretty turbulent in the second half of the 2000s. I changed addresses 4 times in 5 years, leading to “asset chaos”. In the late 2010s, as I was building my collection of older games and consoles, I also picked up strategy guides where I could to develop a library of those and even get some back that I once had.

Now, in 2025, I’ve amassed a fair number of guides, along with some video game magazines. It’s almost a full bookshelf. This is an important part of my “retro” collection because it’s a callback to a time when print and online sources could co-exist. I treasure having guides and magazines to read back through again, as I did when they were new.

I’m not sure how many more guides I’ll pick up along my collecting journey. Buying them online has become quite expensive, due to shipping fees, and local game stores have shown steady increases in asking prices for them. But, at least for now, I can revel in the fact that I’ve reached my personal Ace Combat guide milestone.

Maybe I need to write about the series itself at some point… but that’s for another time.