A Beginner's Guide to Ripping VHS to PC

In this article, I'll touch upon the more important aspects of ripping VHS tapes, from picking the right hardware, to doing maintenance, to the VHS-to-digital process and archiving. All without breaking the bank.

New AC website + Interview with Team NEMO

Introducing "Ace Combat Lighthouse" the new website dedicated to the Ace Combat series!

Its aim is to be the new hub for the Ace Combat community and create all kinds of new content about AC games as well as its community, be it images, videos, articles and events!

Among their first content is an interview conducted by Ribbon-Blue where I and iceman-uk, co-founders of Project NEMO, answered questions by him (Part 1) and other members of the AC community (Part 2). (thank you to Ribbon-Blue for this opportunity and to all who sent in their questions)

It is, in a way, the evolution and spiritual successor of the now-defunct Electrosphere.info, which was the de-facto home of the AC community in the West until it was shut down two years ago.

If you want to know more, I suggest reading the in-depth statements by the founders and administrations about their new endeavor. You can also follow them on Twitter here.

20200517 edit: Interview 1 and Interview 2

Voices of AC3 Development Staff Part 2 "Are you all enjoying the 'wild blue yonder'?" Director Iwasaki Takuya

Are you all enjoying the "wild blue yonder"?

"Ace Combat 2" pursued "military realism" but I had a wish where "I want more people to play!" that motivated me to say "Let's make something new!".

I wanted fans to feel "I was pleasantly surprised!" rather than "The series is always the same thing".

Second AC3E tape discovered

It turns out that Mission 00 wasn't the only VHS tape made for Ace Combat 3 after all.
If my information is correct, this is a video that Namco made to introduce and promote the game in game stores.
Highlights include a super-fluid intro with a slightly-different audio mix, a close-up version of the first news broadcast and other art in resolution higher than what appears in-game.

An AC3E review from the distant year of 2002

Review by IcemanUK

"Sublime"

>>INTRODUCTION

'Electrosphere’ : infinite passages to information derived from optical communication... Your judgement will decide the world of the future.

Your judgement will decide.

This may well be the epitaph of AC3 and this review. AC3 is the third in Namco’s AC series and something of a serendipitous find on my part when I picked up the game one wet Wednesday afternoon at my local game importer.

They are USEA's first line of defense.Best of friends, fierce competitors.Ready to protect it against any threat.But what if the enemy... is one of them?

Introducing Iceman-UK's blog "Eject Disc"

Project NEMO co-founder IcemanUK has just launched his own blog Eject Disc, where he's gonna write, and I quote, "Articles on cycling, life, fitness, travel, food, open-source, tech, retro-tech, life in Hampshire and more". Be sure to check it out!

And for his first post he wrote about his experience at this year's OggCamp, a type of conference for people in the IT industry, where he introduced our AC3 fan-translation project to the audience there on Aug 19th. He'd done the same thing many years ago for the Front Mission series fan-translation project which he was also a part of. We worked together on some PowerPoint slides that he then presented himself along with some special videos that showcase Project NEMO, such as an exclusive preview of the new version of the game's first mission and a movie-style trailer, to further illustrate and wow those in attendance. And thanks to popular demand, he then made an encore presentation the very next day on Aug 20th. Thank you Iceman, and thank you to those who were there to hear about our project!

(link in picture)

Dai Satō & the Prototype for Electrosphere: Cowboy Bebop's Brain Scratch vs. Ace Combat 3

Unlike GITS, which AC3 has often been compared to, you're guaranteed to never see AC3 and Cowboy Bebop mentioned in the same sentence, which couldn't be more ironic. Find out why after the jump.

Introducing Krishty's model viewer

Some months ago I was checking the blog's analytics and I found that it had received some traffic from a German forum. Curious enough to check, I discovered the work of a developer who had a particular interest in AC3 and its models.
Wanna see something really cool?

Drawing parallels between AC3 and GITS: analysis of animation, setting and themes

The Ghost in the Shell movie and Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere are my favorite anime film and video-game respectively. In time I started noticing similarities between them, enough to make me want to dive in and elaborate on the threads that these two works have in common.