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.

"You can't make another game like this?!" 2-2

So then the initial development team members, collaborating 

with Dai Sato got together to plan the outline. There it was decided what the world would look like, how to make the contents correspond with the movie parts in order to create an epic RPG (In fact there were 3 recording discs and 2 discs).

And so we were able to demonstrate the 「Dramatic Flight Shooting」concept.
You haven’t heard of a Flight Shooting Game like this before, right? We really wanted to show more people how interesting a Flight Shooting Game could be.

We hoped to attract more people than ever by improving basic elements of the game and fusing the with the effort made this time to include a more in-depth storyline.

For those who up until now have thought the game looked difficult or you didn’t get to do anything your own way, this time, by all means make the most of the story and the new world and give piloting the vast skies a go. There you will find new and exciting things never seen before.

Of course we don’t want to betray the series fans who we devotedly made the game for, and I’m sure you’ll be able to enjoy all the improvements we have made in Ace Combat 3 Electrosphere.

I won’t say that this is the last one as I don’t want a repeat of 2 years ago when they said “You can’t make another game like this“
Because this time I feel like we’ve created something great.
But someday Namco will surely surpass it anyway.

"You can't make another game like this?!" 1-2

Project Leader / Onoda Hiroyuki 

「You can’t make another game like this!?」

Nice to meet you everyone, I am the chief developer Mr. Onoda.
By the time this diary comes out, you should all just about have the software in your hands.

I’m now at a place where I can calmly look back at the development of “Ace Combat 3 – Electrosphere“. So please bear with me as I do so.

2 years ago, “Ace Combat 2” was able to get a good reputation as a flight shooting game. Do you remember the TV commercial?
The catch phrase boasted “You can’t make another game like this” At the time we’d said “Hey now, you can’t say that. How’re we supposed to follow it up?”

Real Revelation Revealed

Hello USEA netizens!

A few fans on YouTube have discovered a discrepancy between the Direct Audio version and the in-game version of the track "Revelation".

This track, found on Direct Audio Disc 2, is noticeably different from the track present in the actual game (M37 Memory Error) and in the AppenDisc's Original Movie. Personally I feel that the DA track lacks the "punch" that the real track possesses. As a result it feels surprisingly empty.

You can listen to the track here and here and compare it to the DA version here.

Thanks to AcronPL, br0th3rsh00t3r and Albireo for helping bring this to light!

AC3 Data Hacking Progress

Funny how our own "Project Nemo" has some parallels with the game plot. Our coder (and newest team member) Gipphe is hacking the AC3 game data, in the game Abyssal Dision would "hack" into an Neucom Delphinus or some other aircraft.

Thankfully Gipphe is not aligned with the Ouroboros and he works in the open! You can catch-up with his progress in his public journal by [clicking here]

I'm sure he'd appreciate any words of support or technical tips/tricks, you can contact him at gipphe {AT} projectnemo [dot] net

Wow, an update!

Hello All, sorry for the "radio silence". The project has been dormant for a long while since we finished translating all the missions. However that is not to say we do not respond to feedback and emails - we try to respond to every email we get. We would like to thank everyone for their kind words and interest in the project.

We have some potentially exciting news - we were recently approached by someone with coding skills who has shown interest in wanting to get our translation into the Japanese version of the game! Our coder is known as "Gipphe" and he is at this very moment diligently inspecting the AC3 game data. His says the first signs are encouraging and rest assured we'll be sure to update the blog a bit more often regarding his progress ;-)

Thanks,

Imran-UK

Erratasphere

Mission 29 - Betrayal
In-game BGM: Mind Flow
Correct BGM: The Execution
Direct Audio shows the track "The Execution" as M29's BGM and is grouped with other BGM featured in the game itself, and very clearly not with the unused tracks. However this track isn't heard anywhere in the original version of AC3.
The international version has this track in the renamed "Swarm" mission. Being the first version I played, my bias is towards this track being more fitting, with the DA's documentation only proving how it really is the right track.

A minor screw up, and one easily circumvented with a little emulator tweaking.