Ace Combat 2 & Assault Horizon Legacy Part #21 - Mission 14B – Operation Dark Star, August 4th, 1998

Part 21: Mission 14B – Operation Dark Star, August 4th, 1998

Pursuit on the Enemy Transport’s Plane Unit / Rescue the Downed Plane

Mission 14B: Operation Dark Star – August 4th, 1998
Mission 18: Operation Cavalry (Legacy Version)

Overview: Operation Belissima begins as the Allied Forces commence their push into Rebel stronghold in northern Usea. Conducted in tandem with Operation Alphaville, both campaigns are designed to cripple key Rebel infrastructure facilities and clear a path to the URF provisional capital, the occupied city of Saint Ark.

The first of these scheduled strikes sends Scarface Squadron to the mountains over Hatties Ravine to run down a URF arms transport flight bound for Saint Ark.

NOTE: With the A path complete in Operation Alphaville, we now step back in time slightly to follow the game down the B path in Operation Belissima, eventually returning to the “present” so to speak in Mission 18 of Ace Combat 2. This mission, Dark Star, is yet another very sparse mission that was ultimately excised from Assault Horizon Legacy, so make of that what you will.

Guest Commentators: The Dark Souls Dragon Dildo Discussion Dream Team of Faerie Fortune and CJacobs returns across these two respective videos to make things more interesting by dragging me wildly off topic and away from Ace Combat.

DEATH RAVCE 2000

The named Ace squadron for this mission are another example of Project Aces’ genre film references in Ace Combat 2. Yes, I know they are called “Death Rave 2000” in the game, but the clearer reference points to the 1975 film Death Race 2000, starring David Carradine, Simone Griffeth, and Sylvester Stallone. The film itself was a dystopian action satire/exploitation film and helped inspire the likes of Twisted Metal, Carmageddon, The Running Man, the Mad Max franchise and The Hunger Games.

The only overt reference to a Death Rave 2000 I could find was an Techno/Industrial compilation album titled Death Rave 2000 and released in 1993 by the now-defunct 21st Circuitry music company.

Though this one is so obscure that I’m willing to call it a happy accident and not a direct reference.

CASSIOPEIA

This will be one of the few times I will address the Legacy mission in these branching updates, just because there’s a blatant change in it from Ace Combat 2. The downed plane the mission centers on was originally called Stagecoach in the AC2 version. In the AHL version, it is renamed Cassiopeia.

In Greek mythology, Cassiopeia was the queen of Aethiopia (Ethiopia), and the mother and Andromeda. Cassiopeia once boasted that she and Andromeda were both more beautiful than the Nereids (sea nymphs), so Poseidon, the jealous asshole that he is, flooded Aethiopia and sent the sea monster Cetus to harass its flooded reaches. After Perseus saved Andromeda from Cetus, Poseidon had Cassiopeia chained to her throne, and then thrown into the heavens to circle around the north star for all eternity in an unending wheel of punishment.

Hence where we get the story of the constellation Cassiopeia, one of the most recognizable constellations in the northern sky after Ursa Major and Orion.