Looks like Ace Combat fans will have another treat to enjoy before the release of Ace Combat 7 on PS4 in 2017, and it's really a juicy surprise.

One of the biggest regrets among the western Ace Combat fanbase (besides the time and resources wasted developing Assault Horizon), is the western release of Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere.

When the game launched for PlayStation in japan in 1999, it came with a full fledged storyline including many anime-style cutscenes, a ton of dialogue, and a branching storyline with multiple endings telling a dystopian story set in the future of the Ace Combat universe.

The cutscenes in particular were notable, as they were one of the first appearances in video games of the acclaimed animation studio Production I.G, known for masterpieces like Ghost in the Shell and Patlabor.

The following year, the title was released in the west, in what went down in history as the worst localization hatchet job ever. In order to save on translation and voice acting, Bandai Namco cut 16 of the 52 missions included in the Japanese version and fully removed the story, the cutscenes, and the branching paths, replacing them with a shoddy linear progression introduced by generic text. It was atrocious.

Fast forward to 2016, and that horrible sin is about to be corrected, by the fans.

A group of awesome people named Project Nemo recently announced that a full fan translation of the game will be released on December 14th, and the latest update mentions that the project is on track to make it for that date.

Western fans that can't understand Japanese will finally be able to fully experience one of the most brain-bending stories of the history of the franchise, with its full cast of characters  and all the dialogue and subtitled cutscenes.

You probably know how much I love the series, so I'm sure you can imagine that I'm smiling from ear to ear as I'm writing this.

You can see the work-in progress version of the fan translation in action in the videos below, courtesy of YouTube user DragonSpikeXIII, the founder and editor of project. On top of that, you can also enjoy the opening animation, to give you a further glimpse on what you can expect, if you're not familiar with the game.

Of course, keep in mind that the test videos include spoilers, so you may want to skip them if you want to experience the story for yourself when the fan translation launches on December 14th.