Space Ace

What can I say about this game? If you aren't familiar, though I doubt anyone who reads these reviews hasn't heard of this one, Space Ace is the Los Angeles of Dragon's Lair's New York, or, the Jim to Dragon's Lair's Marlin Perkins. If that didn't make any sense, this is basically the sci-fi version of the crazy popular, crazier difficult Dragons Lair, from creator Don Bluth. It is indeed a completely different, now non-existent type of game experience.

This style of game was billed as "the future of gaming". Remember THOSE monikers? That, to most hardcore gamers, meant a silly gimmick that people would be writing about on websites devoted to games no one else remembers ten years later. These FMV games were basically animated movies that required you to press a button at precisely, and I mean precisely, the right moment to continue the action. While there were other, even cheesier FMV games which featured live-action b-movie storylines (Night Trap?), the series by Mr. Bluth were animated. Had this been a live-action affair, I don't think I could ever bring myself to write about it. This would have made a horrendous movie.

Space ace follows the misadventures of Dexter (or Space Ace), a mighty astro-robo sasa who is out to defeat the evil Commander Borf and his super laser that turns people into children. As treacherous as that may sound, it's no laughing matter when Dex is turned into a whiny teen again, especially considering the pre-pubescent ramifications of having to save his scantily clad, buxom damsel in distress. That's a whole other can of worms!

So, the basic gameplay involves watching the events unfold and pressing the correct directional button or action button at EXACTLY the right time. That is quite a frustrating aspect when you first start playing, for if you don't anticipate what you're going to have to do, you will die.

I don't know that you could rate the "graphics" of this game, as it's all just hand-drawn animations. It looks very nice, nonetheless. The voice acting is a little corny, but the animation team, in an attempt to keep the production costs low, provided their own voices for the characters.

If you aren't familiar with this game, or Dragon's Lair, they are definitely worth checking out, at least once. Mr. Bluth later created the film "The Secret of NIHM", and, more recently, "Titan AE", so if you enjoyed either of those, you may also want to check this out. Very frustrating, but a novel slice of the past "future" of gaming.