Military of USEA

This is my follow-up post to Cityscapes of USEA, showcasing the airfields, bases and other military facilities of 2040 USEA.

Looking back: Interview with Hiroyuki Onoda

(posted here in case it gets taken down, 01/13/16)

Brett Elston on April 4, 2007 for gamesradar.com

Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere (1999) - Hiroyuki Onoda

Cityscapes of USEA

Sights of urban USEA in the year 2040

AC3E Emulation Options

The first PlayStation has been dead for a long time now. It's been 12 years since I've last played a game on my PS1, which I trashed when I had to move (for the umpteenth time) and the effort of keeping it and getting it to work in a place with a different TV standard just wasn't worth the time, patience or investment.

So if, like me, your only way to play AC3E is via an emulator, then here are my recommendations if you want to get the best out of it.

AC3's Official Localization: The Post-Mortem

Not all Japanese games are brought over to the West. It could be for any reason: because the publisher has no idea how, or doesn't want, to market the game overseas, the game being deemed unprofitable, high localization costs and sometimes it's just plain bad timing.

There are a variety of reasons and combinations of factors that can make a game remain Japan-only, letting it fade into obscurity. As it turns out, there was actually a legitimate reason for Namco Hometek's cutting of AC3's story and characters even though the game had always been meant to receive a proper English release.

This post contains all information that I could find about the localization that AC3 was supposed to get but never actually got. I hope the information contained here will give fans a clearer view on the history of AC3 and why the american and european editions ended up the way they did.

Hidden extra "bonus options" menu screen

Our resident digital treasure hunter Fabian has found even more things hidden inside AC3's files. In this post you'll see the music player and movie player that we can normally access only with the AppenDisc and a model viewer that was completely left out of both the game disc and the AppenDisc but seems to be functional from what our AC3 scholar says.

Missions, screens and other hidden things

A few notes before delving into details:

1) These screenshots have been taken with the pSX 1.13 Emulator and using CEP 0.2.4 as a Gameshark device. Results may differ when trying on a real console. (I remember getting some different results when I tried these codes on my PS a few years ago!).

2) This emulator has problems rendering the "Electrosphere tunnel" of the pre-Mission Menu so don't think of it as a consequence of selecting those missions.

3) The Mission Select Code is 800BF65C 00xx, where xx corresponds to the Mission ID. Only values from 00 to 3B are valid, any value above 3B will cause the game to crash immediately.

4) Legend: NATT: Name Above The Thumbnail
                  SGSN: Save Game Screen Name
                  BSMN: Before Starting Mission Name

All credits to Fabian for going out of his way to uncover all of this, I've merely tidied things up for publication. There is some overlap with previous posts, namely "Digging Further" and "...and the digging comes to an end." but it's better organized and there's some new stuff too.