Gamertell

Title: Don Bluth Presents Space Ace
Price: $39.95
System(s): Blu-ray Disc player (eg. PS3)
Release Date: April 8, 2008
Publisher (Developer): Digital Leisure, Inc. (Bluth Group, Ltd.)
No. Players: 1
ESRB Rating: N/A
Pros: Amazingly clear and beautifully restored video, interesting interviews and the ability to watch the entire game as a short (although a bit spastic) film.
Cons: The game remains impossibly difficult to play and extras are a bit meager for the retail price.
Rating(s): One thumb up, one down; 75/100; C; **1/2 out of 5.

Twenty-two years after its original arcade release (1984), the second laserdisc-based game by Don Bluth and friends is being released on yet another disc format.

Now, of course, that you don’t actually use a joystick or game controller to play. You plop the disc into a Blu-ray player and use the remote’s arrows and Select buttons. You can, of course, play this on the PS3 and use the controller or the PS3 remote, but it really won’t make much difference.

Ace in the Hole

Space Ace stars Ace, a nerdling with a super-buff, superhero alter ego that can be activated with the press of a power button. In typical ‘80s style, Ace’s girlfriend, Kimberly, is immediately kidnapped by the game’s main villain, Borf, and Ace must leap between ledges, zap odd baddies, defeat evil machines and pilot a space craft around giant rolling balls to save her.

Space Ace is a lesson in early context-sensitive gameplay. In each scene/situation, a key object will quickly blink, indicating that Ace can either act on it by pressing a button or not act and hope a better choice comes along. Make a wrong choice or respond too late and it’s curtain for Ace.

As each section is completed, the story progresses and opponents become more deadly. Eventually Ace faces a giant, blue, evil version of himself and ultimately faces big bad Borf (see image below). The game also includes a few options (unlimited lives, difficulty settings and cued responses) which, depending on your player, can give you a very slight advantage in playing the game.

The Blue-ray release also offers a few small extras including interviews with creators Don Bluth, Gary Goldman and Rick Dyer, scenes compiled as a short film, a picture-in-picture commentary and a shorter segment that compares the game quality on various systems. Including playable previews of the other laserdisc games, the extra content amounts to a little longer than an hour.

A Bit Spacey

This transfer looks simply amazing. As the creators comment on the disc, it looks even better than any type of media they viewed it on even when they were creating it. The film has been cleaned to the point of looking un-aged and immaculate (save an overlooked one-second segment that you will likely miss when you blink).

As with Bluth’s Dragon’s Lair, also on Blu-ray, the interview segments are pretty informative and short enough to avoid going into dull remembrances of stuff unrelated to the game. You’ll learn that all of the painted cells are actually at an art school and that Space Ace’s pace was sped up in response to criticism that Dragon’s Lair was too slow. (Yeah, I don’t quite get that either).

The result is a game that is set at such a hyper speed it is virtually unplayable even on the easiest setting. Getting past any section is a matter of quickly fingered trial-and error along with lots of memorization.Even the resulting short film is a dizzying spectacle of amazing animated art chopped into barely comprehensible blips.

If you do decide to invest time in the game, plan to spend a couple frustrating hours repeatedly thumbing through sections until you know every sound and split-second decision. Even the game settings don’t improve the game and converting it to widescreen actually results in lost content (the original was made for a TV-sized screen).

Nice Lookin’ Tights, Too Few Space Flights

Space Ace is an amazing looking release with some truly silly and psychedelic moments. (Best creepy opponent attack: Giant, laughing, rolling head on a cliff.) Otherwise, the game is (still) too frantic to enjoy on its own and the extras are a bit too meager to make up the price difference.

If Digital Leisure were to release all of their original laserdisc games on one Blu-ray disc, however, I would fully endorse owning the disc for a nostalgic appreciation of the laserdisc game genre. Otherwise, unless you are a truly hard-core laserdisc game or Bluth fan, rent or borrow this for a day just to get a glimpse back at a piece of arcade gaming history.

Read [Digital Leisure] Read [Gamertell]

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