Story:
Ace, a musclebound space pirate (or soldier, or something) is on a quest to stop the evil Borf from taking over the galaxy. Borf kidnaps Ace's girlfriend, Kimberly, and hits Ace with the Infanto Ray.
This oddly-named weapon transforms the hunky Ace into Dexter, a skinny, nerdy teenager with a goddamn hilarious voice and basically no combat ability whatsoever (hence all the dodging and running and crap these games tended to require).
Gameplay:
As Dexter chases after Kimberly, he'll occasionally be able to turn back into Ace for a short amount of time. Though your abilities don't really change that much, Ace's segments tend to focus much more on combat than fleeing. After you've spent twenty minutes running from every single alien and robot as Dexter, it's indescribably satisfying to blast everything you see for a short amount of time.
Furthermore, changing into Ace was often optional: whenever Dexter's watch told him it was time to energize (don't ask me why), you could simply not press the fire button and Dexter would continue along a totally different path. It's not exactly Grand Theft Auto, but these little hints of nonlinearity made Space Ace even more lovable than its predecessor.
That's about as indepth as the game gets, given that it is a laserdisc title. You still only have five inputs -- the four joystick directions, and the fire key. What's interesting, however, is how Space Ace's gameplay fits within the Bluth trilogy, bridging the gap between Dragon's Lair and Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp.
In the first Dragon's Lair, the player is very rarely given any flashing onscreen clues as to where to go. If you're supposed to go left, you'll see a door open, but more often than not the door won't be accompanied by a big, bright "HEY PRESS THE JOYSTICK IN THIS DIRECTION" flash of light which guides the player through literally every single joystick or button press in the much more user-friendly Dragon's Lair II.
Space Ace splits the difference between the two games: the flashing cues aren't present for every moment of gameplay, but they're far more frequent than what you'd find in the first Dragon's Lair. Since the game is probably the hardest in the trilogy (the last boss fight is tricky as hell, but incredibly satisfying if you do it right), the addition of more flashy-thingies was appreciated.
Gameplay-wise, I still prefer Dragon's Lair II -- call me a coward, but I like being told where and when to go -- but Space Ace remains my favorite of the trilogy simply because of its goofy Buck Rogers aesthetic and great sense of humor (Kimberly's repeated sing-songy delivery of "Get me out of heeeeere!" and Dexter's badass-nerdy "A-ha, Borf is here!" still make me laugh).
Why you're probably not playing it:
It's a Laserdisc game. People don't really play Laserdisc games anymore, and even if they do, the phrase itself brings to mind one game, and one game only: Dragon's Lair. Dragon's Lair received a sequel and several remakes; Space Ace only had a godawful SNES port.
Space Ace is the sadly neglected child of the Don Bluth laserdisc game trilogy, which is a real shame considering what a great sense of humor it had, and how efficiently it bridged the gameplay gap between the two Dragon's Lair games.
Thankfully, it's now really easy to get all three games of the Bluth trilogy: you can get them for PC or DVD for very reasonable prices (often less than five bucks for each game), and both Dragon's Lair and Space Ace are currently available on Blu Ray with a bunch of special features and stuff (Dragon's Lair II is forthcoming, probably).
Either way, there's a myriad of ways to get your hands on Space Ace. Whether you played the games in the 80's and wanna check out a digitially remastered version of this semi-obscure classic, or if you're totally new to the whole idea of Laserdisc games and just want to see how they could possibly function, then it's definitely worth checking one or all of these games out.
Also, the entire game lasts less than ten minutes if you beat it without dying. You won't beat it without dying, because a lot of it requires absurdly fast reflexes mixed with pattern memorization, but I just thought that was worth mentioning. I would have assumed the total running time of the complete game would have been at least a half hour, but I was dead wrong. You can see a full, no-death playthrough of the game below.
On an unrelated note
I went to the Video Games Live concert in Arizona, and after playing some music from all three Bluth Laserdisc games, Tommy Tallarico actually brought Don Bluth out onto the stage to talk about the Laserdisc games, the first of which being one of only three videogames on permanent displayin the Smithsonian.
What followed was one of the most awesome (because I was staring at Don motherfucking Bluth and had not expected to) and depressing (because of what he said) things I've ever seen.
Bluth said that though he had a lot of creative control over his actual movies (An American Tail, The Secret of NIMH), he didn't really exert any control over their team for the videogames. They pretty much turned their teams loose and let them do whatever they wanted; despite the fact that Bluth and Dyer got a lot of the credit, they admitted most of it should have gone to their team.
He then said something like "I've worked in animation for forty years, and yet the only thing anyone's gonna remember about me are those games." He said it with a smile, but considering it was less than a decade ago that Titan A.E. pretty much bankrupted Fox Animation studios, I got the impression that he was legitimately kind of bummed out that the stuff he worked hardest on was getting the least attention.
This game gave me so many fucking nightmares when I was a kid. God damn it. I will never play this again.
i still have this game on 5.25" floppies. if only i had a puter that could read them :( great writeup, great game!
I lost a lot of quarters on this and Dragon's Lair. Each were so visually stunning for their time, and really drew the crowds. Very hard to play though, especially when you were used to doing the Atari 2600 thing.
I have a raging hard-on for Don Bluth. He is in contention for my most favorite animator ever. Sadly, Dragon's Lair was the only one out of the thee that I've played (and that was as a PC port). I really need to play the other two.
The sounds of the arcade in my mind will always have Space Ace and Dragon's Lair as part of it's beautiful cacophony.
I'm kind of glad the laser disc format died. The size of them was a major issue. Take a look:
Still, the idea of a cartoon video game is awesome. I've spent some time with Dragons Lair but never Space Ace or Dragons Lair 2. I really would love to play them again. Classic games.
Thanks Rev for lighting a fire under my ass to look for these.
Don Bluth is awesome by the way. The Land Before Time and All Dogs Go To Heaven were brilliant. Guy gets a lot of respect from me for going against Disney. Great cartoons.
All this game reminds me of is total frustration and bankruptcy.
I only ever played it at the arcade and it took up all my pocket money and paper round money and in the end only caused me to end up 'almost' in tears.
I truly did suck at it and it can very easily cost alot of money for a VERY VERY VERY short amount of game time.
ALso in my defense I do remember it being extremely glitchy.
Video Games Live in AZ? Why was I not informed. I suck.
All three of these games influenced me when I was younger. I still watch cartoon action sequences and try to imagine what the commands would be to get through them (Energize is used too little). And yeah, the death sequences gave me nightmares when I was a kid, too. Still love 'em.
I used to have the 3-game collection for PC a while back. It must have been glitchy too, because while in the arcade Space Ace you had a choice whether you wanted to Energize or not, every time I didn't want to in the PC version, I died. Always pissed me off.
Don Bluth is extremely talented, but he's had a lot of bad luck.
"A quest to regain your manhood". Make what you will of that. O_o
All i remember about this game is it was a trailer on a random disk i found at a jumble where this n dragons Lair was on along with some shitty DVD game called Mad Dog Macree.
Funnist games (as they were so shit) I have EVER seen.
I dunno, I expect he'll be remember for Nimh, Land Before Time, and American Tail. The mid-80s were good to him.
Secret of Nimh was a great movie - I read the book as a kid for a book report or something, and when the movie came out, I was so excited.
Anyone remember Super Don Quixote? It was another of those types of games - I actually liked it even more than Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, maybe because I could actually play it a bit longer, lol. I really sucked at those games. I also liked it cuz I seem to remember it was a bit darker in theme than the others, with undead and the like.
All of those games though were amazing works of art.
I've been meaning to play those for years and years now
wonder if they're on netflix?
Returning Dtoiders: login now to post a comment
Destructoid is an open discussion community. You don't need to "audition" to post a comment - just Create an avatar now - it's fast and free: PLUS you also get your own gaming blog and begin posting stories and uploading videos in our open community area that may also appear on our home page. Sign up and we'll guide you through it, it's easy and 100% anonymous.