Project Aces’ anime tie-in flight game, The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces releases for the Wii this Tuesday – which you’d be forgiven for not knowing. It would be nice if whilst bitching about Wii titles under performing, more people took the time out to say “oh by the way here’s one to watch next week..”, so here’s my first stab at it prior to review.

The game is releasing for $29.99, and offers a very unique control scheme customized for the Wii, which leaves me optimistic that Sky Crawlers will join a small list of games that have taken the challenge of designing for the Wii further than most studios.

It helps my fervor that the game has the aesthetic sensibilities of the anime, with themes that leave me feeling like someone is finally following up on the work of the original Area 88 OVA – which we all remember resulted in a very fine game called U.N. Squadron.

It’ll be interesting to see how easy it is to find a copy of the game on store shelves next week. For those of us that still enjoy making purchases in physical stores, XSEED titles can be notoriously difficult to find – there were in fact plenty of people I’ve talked with who simply couldn’t find a copy of Retro Game Challenge in a store.

I suspect I’ll be trying to hunt down a copy of The Sky Crawlers at Ebgames, and the fact that I’m willing to walk into one is a testament to how optimistic I am about the game.

If any of this has peaked your curiosity, you can catch some video after the break.