Space Ace (game)

This article is about the 1984 game. For other meanings, see Space Ace.

"Struggle with Dexter to regain his manhood! "

—Narrator

Space Ace is a laserdisc video game produced by Don Bluth's Bluth Group, Cinematronics and Advanced Microcomputer Systems (later renamed RDI Video Systems). It was unveiled in October 1983, just four months after the Dragon's Lair game, then released in the spring of 1984. Like its predecessor, it featured film-quality animation played back from a laserdisc.

While originally more of a spiritual sequel to its predecessor, Space Ace's later inclusion among the games collected as the Dragon's Lair Trilogy officially made it part of the Dragon's Lair series.

Story

Space Ace follows the adventures of the dashing hero Dexter, better known as "Ace." Ace is on a mission to stop the villainous Commander Borf, who is seeking to attack Earth with his "Infanto Ray" to render Earthlings helpless by reverting them into infants. At the start of the game, Ace is partially hit by the Infanto Ray, which reverts him into Dexter, the mere adolescent, and Borf kidnaps his female partner Kimberly, who thus becomes the game's "damsel in distress." It is up to the player to guide Ace's younger incarnation through a series of obstacles in pursuit of Borf, in order to rescue Kimberly and prevent Borf from using the Infanto Ray to conquer Earth. However, Dexter has a wristwatch-gadget which can optionally allow him to "ENERGIZE" and temporarily reverse the effects of the Infanto-Ray to turn him back into Ace for a short time, and overcome more difficult obstacles in a heroic manner. The game's attract mode introduces the player to the story via narration and dialogue.

Attract mode narration (by Michael Rye):

Space Ace! Defender of justice, truth and the planet Earth! Ace is being attacked by the evil Commander Borf! Struggle with Dexter to regain his manhood! Destroy the Infanto-Ray! Defeat the evil Borf! Be valiant space warrior, the fate of Earth is in your hands!

Voice Cast

• Jeff Etter - Ace
• Will Finn - Dexter, Baby Borf
• Lorna Pomeroy - Kimberly
• Don Bluth - Commander Borf
• Michael Rye - Narrator

Gameplay

Like Dragon's Lair, Space Ace is composed of numerous individual scenes, which require the player to move the joystick in the right direction or press the fire button at the right moment to avoid the various hazards Dexter/Ace faces. Space Ace introduced a few gameplay enhancements, most notably selectable skill levels and multiple paths through several of the scenes. At the start of the game the player could select one of three skill levels; "Cadet", "Captain" or "Space Ace" for easy, medium and hard respectively; only by choosing the toughest skill level could the player see all the sequences in the game (only around half the scenes are played on the easiest setting). A number of the scenes had "multiple choice" moments when the player could choose how to act, sometimes by choosing which way to turn in a passageway, or by choosing whether or not to react to the on-screen "ENERGIZE" message and change from Dexter into Ace. In a 1983 interview with Video Games magazine, Bluth explained the alternative playstyles was implemented to increase replay value and cater to the player's preferences: "You can be protective and go the safe way once and awhile and then switch to the more challenging way. I think this will give the game longer life. . . . The second game has to be a better game because the novelty won't be there."

Most scenes also have separate, horizontally flipped versions. Dexter usually progresses through scenes by avoiding obstacles and enemies, but Ace goes on the offensive, attacking enemies rather than running away; although Dexter does occasionally have to use his pistol on enemies when it is necessary to advance. An example can be seen in the first scene of the game, when Dexter is escaping from Commander Borf's robot drones. If the player presses the fire button at the right moment, Dexter turns temporarily into Ace and can fight them, whereas if the player chooses to stay as Dexter, the robots' drill attacks must be dodged instead.

Gameplay was designed to be an estimated 50 percent faster than Dragon's Lair and more interactive, creating a significantly greater challenge. In an early promotional interview for the game, Bluth said, "In the 25 minutes of animation we've put onto the disc, a very good player will get through to the end in about eight or ten minutes. During that time, we've got to hit him with every kind of threat possible--and at a rapid-fire speed."

Levels

The following level titles are from the Sega Mega CD manual.

1. Kim is kidnapped
2. The Black Spheres
3. Dodging the Beams
4. The Platforms
5. The Dogs and Robots
6. The Junk Planet
7. The Dog fight
8. The Yellow Planet
9. The Dark Side
10. The Motorcycle Chase
11. The Roller Skates
12. The Giant Eels
13. The Final Confrontation

In the Nintendo DS port of the game, the stages are titled similarly with a few variation:

1. Kim is Kidnapped
2. The Black Spheres
3. Dodging the Beams
4. The Platforms
5. The Dogs and Robots
6. The Junk Planet
7. The Dog Fight
8. The Checkered Tunnel
9. The Yellow Planet
10. The Dark Side,
11. The Motorcycle Chase
12. The Roller Skates and Giant Eels
13. The Final Confrontation

Development

The animation for Space Ace was produced by the same team that tackled the earlier Dragon's Lair, headed by ex-Disney animator Don Bluth. To keep the production costs down, the studio again chose to use its staff to provide voices for the characters rather than hire actors (one exception is Michael Rye, who reprises his role as the narrator of the attract sequence, as he did on Dragon's Lair). Bluth himself provides the (electronically altered) voice of Commander Borf. In an interview about the game, Bluth stated that had the studio been able to afford more professional actors, he thought Paul Shenar would have been more suitable for the role of Borf than himself. The game's animation features some rotoscoping, wherein models were built of Ace's spaceship Star Pac, the jet-powered Space Cycle, and the tunnel in the game's dogfight sequence, then filmed and traced over to render moving animated images with very realistic depth and perspective.

Character Development

Don Bluth noted Ace and Kimberly, in contrast to Dirk the Daring and Princess Daphne, “you want to make a game that’s fresh and different. . . . The couple are really different from Daphne and Dirk. He’s pretty hip and has all the hip dialogue and so is she. So, you’ve got two very independent creatures who are trying to get together, which makes the whole character dynamic much, much different. Mainly what I’m attracted to here is the fact that if you [the player] fail in any of your attempts to make this guy win that you lose, you lose big time because you get reduced to a child and you have to go through it all over again. So his girlfriend keeps laughing at him because if he fails, he makes an idiot of himself.”

Format

Space Ace was made available to distributors in two different formats; a dedicated cabinet, and a conversion kit that could be used to turn an existing copy of Dragon's Lair into a Space Ace game. Early version #1 production units of the dedicated Space Ace game were actually issued in Dragon's Lair style cabinets. The latter version #2 dedicated Space Ace units came in a different, inverted style cabinet. The conversion kit included the Space Ace laserdisc, new EPROMs containing the game program, an additional circuit board to add the skill level buttons, and replacement artwork for the cabinet. The game originally used the Pioneer LD-V1000 or PR-7820 laserdisc players, but an adaptor kit now exists to allow Sony LDP series players to be used as replacements if the original player is no longer functional.

Reception & Release History

Gary Goldman estimated that the Space Ace arcade games sold about 50% less units than Dragon’s Lair, attributing the drop to the waning arcade market. Rick Dyer stated in a retrospective commentary “I think Space Ace actually did very well but compared to the monster, the Godzilla of Dragon’s Lair. . . . the trade I remember you would see they were complaining because for a lot of them Dragon’s Lair paid for itself—the machine-in two or three weeks, which at that time was unheard of—normally six month—to pay for one of those machines. And Space Ace was taking like four to six weeks to pay for itself. . . But they had the expectations it was gonna be of the level of Dragon’s Lair, which no one had ever seen—Dragon’s Lair was also the first fifty-cent game.”

Numerous versions of Space Ace were created for home computers and game systems, most of which attempted to mimic the arcade version's lushly animated graphics, with varying degrees of success. A sequel, Space Ace II: Borf's Revenge, was created for the PC mixing new animation with scenes from the original game that were left out of the floppy disk-based versions due to large file sizes. Along with said versions for Amiga, MS-DOS, Apple IIGS, Atari ST and Macintosh, ReadySoft issued a CD-ROM version featuring down-sampled video for the Macintosh which preserved almost all of the original laserdisc content.

In 1991, Leland Corporation released a slightly updated version of Space Ace in the form of a conversion kit for the then recently released Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp. The updated version added more complicated moves (including diagonal moves), and dropped the easier skill levels, meaning only the "Ace" (difficult) level could be played.

In 1993, ReadySoft released Space Ace for the Philips CD-i (Compact Disc Interactive), followed by a Sega CD release in 1994. The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly gave the CD-i version an average score of 7.75 out of 10. They described it as a "pixel perfect" conversion of the arcade game, though they criticized that the game lacks replay value. In review of the Sega CD version, GamePro gave the game an overall score of 3.9 out of 5, remarking that the game 'unfortunately highlights the color bleeding of the Sega CD', but praised the story, voicing, and music, and concluded "Space Ace is great for animation buffs or gamers who enjoyed Dragon's Lair." Next Generation gave the Sega CD version two out of five stars, criticizing the game's story as "juvenile" and the gameplay as 'overly limited': "The only way to beat any of the game's 13 stages is to play through it over and over until your reactions are automatic. You could surely train a monkey to do the same thing."

Next Generation gave ReadySoft's first PC CD-Rom version two out of five stars review, commenting that "Don Bluth's LaserDisc classic remains an entertaining cartoon attached to the antithesis of interactivity. . . . Space Ace does manage to come out looking and sounding almost exactly like the original arcade adventure, but in the end, that's not necessarily a good thing." Entertainment Weekly gave the game a B- and wrote that "Space Ace is part of a unique genre of CD games, the so-called decision point disc, in which, instead of controlling your character's every movement, you respond to specific threats. But Space Ace is a mixed blessing at best. It features terrific Don Bluth animation and an amusing plot involving the evil Commander Borf and his Infanto Ray. On the other hand, thanks to very tricky timing, it's such a frustrating experience you may want to turn the disc into a Frisbee."

SNES version screenshot

A Space Ace title was also released for the SNES and Super Famicom in 1994, having been developed by Empire Software. However, the SNES cartridge storage limitations forced the development team to convert the concept into a platforming action game with levels based on the scenes from the original. Many of the game's cutscenes imitate the full-motion video quality of the arcade game. In order to see the credits, the player must get an "Ace" rank on every level, meaning that they must have near-perfect accuracy and collect all the disks found throughout the game. While some contemporary reviews praised the graphics and appreciated the game's creativity in transitioning a laser disc game into a console platformer, most critics panned the gameplay as frustrating.

The Dragon's Lair Deluxe Pack released by Digital Leisure in 1997 featured Space Ace along with both arcade Dragon's Lair games. They also released a version of Space Ace on DVD that could be played on most DVD players, although it lacked the skill level select of the arcade version, and also played somewhat differently (if the player made a mistake on the arcade version they simply picked up again roughly where they left off, whereas the DVD version forced the player to replay the entire scene from the beginning).

DAPHNE, an emulator for laserdisc based games, can emulate both the original version and the 1991 version. DAPHNE requires the ROM files plus the original laserdisc to run. Alternatively, an MPEG-2 video stream and Ogg Vorbis audio stream can be substituted for the laserdisc. These streams can be generated from the original laserdisc or from Digital Leisure's DVD.

In the December 2003 issues of PSW (PlayStation World) and XBW (Xbox World), a free disk was given away with the magazine featuring Space Ace on one side (accompanied by trailers for similar games), and trailers for upcoming games on the other.

In May 2009, the game was made available on iOS.

In October 2010, Space Ace was first bundled together with the Dragon's Lair Trilogy for physical release on the Wii, which also included Dragon's Lair and Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp.

It was later released as DSiWare in North America on December 6, 2010 and in the PAL region on December 31, 2010. In reviewing the heavily compressed DSiWare release for NintendoLife, Philip Reed scored the game 3/10, dismissing the overall game concept as a relic of quarter-eating arcade culture, but commending the port itself as "pretty strong" with smooth video and clear audio.

On February 17, 2011, it was confirmed by Paul Gold of Digital Leisure that a port was going to be released for the PlayStation 3, via the PlayStation Network, like they had done for the Dragon's Lair video game. It was released to the PSN the week of February 22, 2011.

An Android port of the game was released on December 28, 2012 via Google Play.

In August 2013, the game was made available through Steam.

In July 2015, Rebecca Heineman released the source code from a [reverse engineered Apple IIGS version (dating back from 1990) on GitHub.

There is a bundle sold on the PlayStation Store also called Dragon's Lair Trilogy that includes the original Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, and Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp as a set.

In January 2019, Space Ace also appeared on Nintendo Switch as part of the Dragon's Lair Trilogy.

Animated adaptation

Main article: Space Ace (TV series)

In the short lived cartoons, Ace and Kimberly continue their battles against Borf, who appears regularly as the series' main villain, masterminding different plans in attempt to conquer the Earth, but always being defeated by the heroic pair and their allies. The episodes go into detail of their home base, and Ace's exposure to the Infanto Ray is kept a secret between the two space patrol officers, with Kimberly covering for Ace’s transformations by deceiving Space Marshall Vaughn into believing that the gangly “Dexter” is her kid brother. Unlike the games, Ace has absolutely no control over the changes, often necessitating Kimberly to play an active role in succeeding in their missions.

Comics adaptation

Main article: Space Ace (comics)

As with Dragon's Lair, a comic book miniseries incorporating elements from both the original game and the Saturday Supercade version (such as Ace randomly changing into Dexter and back, instead of "energizing" back into Ace) was initially printed in 2003 by CrossGen Entertainment, and completed by Arcana Studios years later. The comic book adventure also serves as a sequel to the 1984 arcade release, continuing the story after Borf's de-aging into Baby Borf and introducing his equally-wicked brother Commander Gorf.

Legacy in Poplar Culture

Samurai Jack references Space Ace and the other Don Bluth-animated arcade game, Dragon's Lair, in a scene from the episode "Jack and the Dragon". When Jack asks which path to take to reach a dragon's lair, he is told the left; when he asks what the right path leads to, Jack is told, "Space Ace."

Trivia

• Because of its inclusion among the games collected as the Dragon's Lair Trilogy and official canonization into the Dragon's Lair series, some fans speculate that its futuristic setting is a centuries-later continuation of the original game in the series, with one or more of its main characters even being descended from Dirk the Daring and Princess Daphne.
• An NES version of Space Ace was developed but never released.

Gallery

Promotional Poster

Conversion Header for Dragon's Lair II cabinet

External Links

• Apple App Store: Space Ace
• Apple App Store: Space Ace HD