Space Ace

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Ace, Earth's greatest hero, is attacked by an evil commander called Borf. Borf kidnapped beautiful Kimberly and he is now planning to take over planet Earth with the help of his dreaded weapon, the Infanto Ray. Ace now must go through treacherous battles to destroy the Infanto Ray, save the Earth and ultimately rescue Kimberly. The home computer conversion comes in floppy disks and is limited to around 40 fast action screens taken from the original laser-disc arcade game. Each screen lasts for some seconds, and at various points during a scene, Ace will meet a bad fate unless he correctly reckons his reactions. Like Dragon's Lair, Space Ace requires the player to move the joystick in the correct direction or press the fire button at the right moment to avoid the hazards. Each scene will take a good number of attempts to get it right, and although there is a save game option, it is quicker to play through the entire sequence again, as the amount of interaction between the cartoon and the player is minimal at each scene. But be advised to remember or even write down the correct movements you made! Although its few improvements to the Dragon's Lair title, the gameplay is rather simple and as long as you find the correct directions, the game can be finished in a very short time, which is rather negative. Unfortunately, the gameplay is nothing more than a memory test but the whole presentation (visuals and sound) is so cool, and looks like a four-disks animated demo! Note that, along with the floppy disk-based versions for Amiga and Atari ST, ReadySoft published a CD-ROM version featuring down-sampled video that preserves almost all of the original laser-disc content.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
OK, the graphics make this game an absolute joy to watch! Both animations and coloring are superb, although each scene is running at only 16 colors on screen! I do believe though that the Amiga version could handle at least 32 colors in this game. With bags of variety in the perspectives and viewports it makes excellent viewing for a couple of minutes. The animations are based on the laser-disc arcade version. The creation of the ex-Disney artist Don Bluth looks stunning. The animation is fast, colorful and detailed. The soundtrack has also been sampled directly from the arcade game to good effect. All of the game's sound effects are sampled, but too often, the fanfares and laser blasts merge into one when a new scene is loaded. In terms of sound quality, the Amiga and Apple IIGS versions are almost identical, whilst the ST version offers lower quality in its samples.