Game: Space Ace
Platform(s): Arcade, PC, Blu Ray, DVD, Amiga, 3DO, Sega CD, SNES, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Jaguar CD, CD-i
Release Date: 1984
Favorite Line: "Struggle with Dexter to regain his manhood."
Favorite Moments: Rocket skates sequence, fighting with giant evil Dexter, and motorbike race.
Space Ace was the follow-up to the incredibly successful Dragon's Lair, the interactive cartoon that swept through arcades in 1983 and introduced America to Dirk the Daring. While it would be easy to write off Space Ace as "Dragon's Lair in space" -- as I purposefully did in the title of the article -- a few minutes with the game reveals developer Cinematronics's expanded vision. Dragon's Lair was a series of vignettes that you had to survive, loosely tied together as exploring Singe's castle. Space Ace has a narrative. There is a three-act structure to the game. And it has a full soundtrack instead of audio flourishes, which helps create a more cinematic experience.
I hold Dragon's Lair in high regard. I fell in love with the game in 1983, begged for quarters in order to play it, and have bought it on multiple formats over the years, such as the Sega CD and DVD. But yesterday, I sat down with the Blu Ray edition of the game, published by Digital Leisure. (It looks gorgeous, by the way. The new 1080p transfer is incredible.) I ended up staying awake until 3AM to beat the game. And in doing so, I started to see that Space Ace is, in many ways, a superior game.
Primary Characters
- Dexter/Ace: Defender of earth, Dexter is a musclebound lug with a breezy ego. But when struck by the Infanto Ray, we see that he was just a regular geeky teen like anybody that was playing the game.
- Kimberly: Essentially, she's the redheaded version of Daphne, the damsel-in-distress from Dragon's Lair. Kimmy's been kidnapped by Borf and his alien minions.
- Commander Borf: The blue-skinned maniac wants to take over earth, forcing it into submission with his Infanto ray.
What It Was All About
The titular Space Ace is Dexter and, according to the game's attract mode, he is the "defender of justice, truth, and planet Earth." Dexter is suave and possessed of the kind of ego we seem to like in rock stars, but not necessarily in our friends. At the start of the game, Ace and his girlfriend Kimberly, are attacked by the evil Commander Borf. Like any sci-fi villain worth his salt, Borf is intent on enslaving humankind. His weapon of choice is the Infanto Ray, a laser cannon that reduces its targets to children. Borf hits Ace, turning him into the teenager Dexter, and absconds with Kimberly.
Dexter must chase Borf across space, both on foot and in his ship, the Star Pac. The adventure unfolds across space stations and alien worlds, some quite conventional for Reagan Era sci-fi while others that are a little more 'Through the Looking Glass,' such as a showdown with an evil giant Dexter. While little Dexter climbs around the giant trying to escape, the evil Dexter becomes so possessed with killing his quarry that he starts shooting his own fingers off. Eventually, the giant Dexter is reduced to only a head, which rolls after Dexter. Psychedelic? Sure. But it was the kind of weird that worked in this bridge era of sci-fi between "Star Wars" and Harlan Ellison.
Gameplay
Space Ace is an interactive movie, so you are relegated to just pressing the joystick in certain directions to keep the action going. There's a fire button for Dexter's laser pistol, but at times, this button doubles as "Energize." There are moments during the adventure where Dexter can tap a watch on his wrist and temporarily revert to Ace, his groovy grown-up self. However, you do not always have to turn into adult Dexter -- it's a choice. This gives you a little more of a director's chair experience than Dragon's Lair, as there are different solutions for sequences as both teenage and adult Dexter. For example, when running down a corridor with electrified tubes, you can either roll away as Dexter or energize into Ace to repel the glass.
Many sequences in Space Ace are longer and more complex than Dragon's Lair, especially if you choose to play the game on its harder difficulties like Captain or Ace. Choosing these modes removes prompts and introduces harder scenes you would not get to play if you opted to try the easier Cadet mode.
The game is loaded with some pretty over-the-top scenes. One of my favorites -- and it's a favorite of the game's creators (Don Bluth, Rick Dyer) as revealed in the video commentary of the new Blu Ray release -- is the rocket skate scene. Dexter has finally rescued Kimberly, but they are not out of trouble. They must zoom over a maze of walls on rocket skates. It's silly. But what's very cool is that the maze itself is a cylinder that a modeler created and filmed. The spinning maze cylinder is film footage, and the animation is placed on top of it. This mixture of animation and live-action is seen elsewhere, such as a space chase. The tunnels the Dexter zooms through are models that have been lit and colored in post-production while the HUD of the ships are animated on top of them.
The motorbike scene is also particularly entertaining. Ace has just rescued Kimberly and she's giving him a little lip about it taking too long to save her. He's rolling alongside of her on his motorbike while she walks in a minor huff. It's both funny and human, and it works in the context of all the sci-fi stuff happening around them. When alien bikers attack, Kimberly has no problem hopping on the back of Ace's bike. The bike is actually a model that was filmed and then traced over. The process is called rotoscoping. And in Space Ace, it works to give the bike the right look as the camera moves around the scene.
The game climaxes in a showdown with Borf. Using electrified boffing sticks, the two battle back and forth. This is an incredibly tough scene to survive. Finally, Borf himself is struck with his own Infanto Ray and is turned into a little baby. He looks like a fat Smurf.
Why I Love the Game
Perhaps it's partially due to my growing up in the Golden Age of the arcades, but I do have a real affinity for these laser disc games -- especially Dragon's Lair and Space Ace. Space Ace, which was constructed alongside Dragon's Lair, is the far more ambitious project, and that's also what endears it to me. Bluth and company were shooting for the moon in this one. Whereas Dragon's Lair was an olio show, Space Ace is a story with a straight line of action.
Space Ace's narrative seems simple at first glance. Boy loses girl, boy fights monsters, boy rescues girl. But there is something clever moving in a separate current, and it has to do with the Infanto Ray. Throughout the game, Ace is constantly being emasculated. As the muscular Ace, we see an image of swagger and cool. But he started out just like the rest of us. And when he screws up in the game or gets into serious trouble, Ace has the choice to literally "man up" or to run. Did I see this when I was a kid? Hardly. But it's inescapable now.
I also love the artistry in Space Ace.
The animation is excellent, but the craftsmanship seen in all corners of the game is inspiring. Take the backdrops, for example. The matte paintings are gorgeous. The mustard sky of an alien world. Starscapes splashed with punks and purples. Before computers took over animation, this is how backdrops in both cartoons and many movies were created. And the work here in Space Ace is awesome.
The use of color is fantastic, too. The choices, such as the orange in Ace's suit, really pop off the screen. (Nowhere is this more evident than in the 1080p transfer. Wow.) But there are little touches, such as using slightly different hues depending on the situation. Borf's bright blue skin might take on a grayer or purplish tint inside or when he's near an energy source. It creates depth. And you do not see this in a lot of cartoons anymore. You create a character, point-and-click its color scheme, and then run the episode. Seeing artistry like this is refreshing in a world where television animation is ruled by shortcuts.
Space Ace didn't exactly get a fair shake in the arcades. According to the commentary on the new disc, arcade operators expected an immediate miracle in the vein of Dragon's Lair. (Apparently those machines paid for themselves in just a few weeks thanks to their popularity.) Space Ace also came out as the industry started to falter. 1984 was an unkind year to videogames thanks to the overreach of the Atari 2600 and a glut of bad home games. Arcades were not exempt from the fallout of the industry crash.
While the sense of nostalgia around Space Ace is nowhere near that which props up Dragon's Lair, it deserves just as many accolades. The gameplay may be similar to Dragon's Lair, but Space Ace is definitely a more complete experience thanks to its narrative, subtext, and artistry.