“Air Combat” is an art mod I made for the I3 new media art festival in Chicago 2011, with a hacked Playstation console and the 1992 video game “Air Combat”.

In this mod you fly forever, with infinite fuel, zero weapons, and no control over pitch (so that you can’t crash into the ground). The normal soundtrack of endless guitar solos is replaced by soothing high-altitude noise.

If the game is left running long-term, there is a very slight possibility that the player might encounter one of two other planes in the world of this mod. Based on the map size I’ve estimated that this may happen approximately once a year, although with viewer control input this could of course vary. Of the two other planes, one is unarmed (just like you) and will try to evade and escape, and the other is a fighter jet that will try to kill you, and has an incredibly slim chance of being able to do so, which would end the artwork until it is reset.

!!MAKE THIS PIECE YOURSELF!!
If you would like to recreate this piece, here is what you will need:

- Playstation console (one of the original models with the Parallel I/O port in the back), modded to play burned “backup” cd-rom games (alternatively, google psx swap disk)

- an original Playstation controller that you are willing to temporarily destroy (this hardware hack should be repairable, but don’t blame me if you break it)

- a second fully functional Playstation controller

- a small phillips head screwdriver

- a Parallel I/O port Gameshark (programmable) card

- rubber electrical tape

- scissors

++ IF YOU HAVE ALL OF THAT ++
First, open up the first controller and put small pieces of electrical tape over each of the contacts for every button except for left and right turning. That is the extent of the controller hack. Next, use the gameshark to program all the appropriate variables. You do this by enabling a search, returning to game, changing something in the game (e.g. fire a missile or lose health), and then returning to the gameshark code to see what numbers changed. You can then override those numbers so that they are different, or make then never change. Last, change the audio. I’m still working on swapping the actual game audio files, which is pretty complicated, so I just disabled all the game sounds and played ran separate discrete rca cables from an exernal source. In the future I’d like to get everything onto one disk, our use the swapdisk method to trick the console into playing cd tracks, or at least splice in my own lines with a little sound card soldering. There have been a lot of audio card hacks to turn the ps1 into an “audiophile quality” cd player, and even into a dj deck, but I have yet to figure out a functional way to actually swap out audio files for my own (e.g. the “pew pew” mod of hl2) without getting a black screen when trying to load the game. If you have any information on how this might be done, please contact me.