Space Ace (1984)

Space Ace: defender of justice, truth, and the planet Earth.

Space Ace was Don Bluth's 1984 follow up to Dragon's Lair, and although the gameplay fundamentals remained the same (timed joystick and button presses), Space Ace improved on it's predecessor in almost every way.

You play Ace, a macho star-pilot who gets zapped by alien Borf's new invention, the "Infanto Ray", a laser gun that reverses the aging process and instantly transforms whatever it hits into a baby.

Apparently Ace only gets winged, however, because instead of turning into a gurgling baby, he merely reverts back to the gangly 98-pound weakling he must have been before he hit puberty and changed his name from Dexter (and certainly before he met his current babe girlfriend, Kimberly).

Borf kidnaps "Kimmy" in his spaceship, and the adventure begins.

So aside from the obvious change in genre, what set Space Ace apart from Dragon's Lair? First off, the pace was much quicker, with many more decision points. Compared to the fast and frenetic action of Space Ace, Dragon's Lair just seemed to crawl.

Space Ace also came much closer to realizing the concept of an interactive movie by offering levels in a linear progression. In Dragon's Lair, you started at the front of the castle and ended in the dragon's den, but in between were a series of self-contained levels that appeared in more-or-less random order.

Space Ace levels unfolded like scenes from a movie, always occurring in the same order as you pursued Borf across alien worlds and through space, ultimately intercepting him at his headquarters to rescue Kimberly. (This had the added benefit of making Space Ace a little bit easier to master, since you were not constantly getting different levels thrown at you each time you died).

And Space Ace offered a new innovation--true branching. First, you had the option of selecting one of three difficulty levels (Cadet, for beginners, or for the daring, Captain or Space Ace, which activated additional levels of play).

Then, there were points during actual gameplay where the player could choose from more than one possible path (sometimes triggering variant action). In this branching space-bound obstacle course, for example, both the upper and lower paths are valid, and return slightly differing play.

But perhaps the most unique example of the new branching capability was the "energizer" gimmick. About once per level, a sensor on Dexter's wrist flashes, indicating an opportunity to briefly transform back to the muscular Ace.

Except for the final level, a complicated hand-to-hand battle with Borf, energizing is always optional. But if you do choose to energize by hitting the button, Dexter temporarily powers-up into his former bulked-up self and participates in an alternate level of play that you would have otherwise missed.

These transformations between personas often take on a comical tone. In one of my favorite levels, Dexter finds himself at the controls of a runaway motorbike, hanging on for dear life.


But after energizing into Ace, he coolly sweet-talks Kimmy while nonchalantly blasting aliens over his shoulder (the user is required to actually press the laser button, however!)


In another memorable level, Ace battles his "dark side", represented by a giant gray-scale version of himself, whom you defeat by baiting into shooting itself to pieces while scaling his enormous body, Shadow-of-the-Colossus style, until all that's left is his grim grinning head!

After some trial-and-error and memorization, and if your timing is precise, you'll end up shooting Borf with his own weapon, transforming him into a baby. It's implied that Ace and Kim will raise him as their own. Isn't he adorable?



SEPARATED AT BORF

Is it me, or does Borf bear a striking resemblance to the genie from Disney's Aladdin (1992)?

I'd be tempted to accuse Disney of ripping off the design...except they both look like they descended from this older Disney genie depicted in Our Friend The Atom (1957).

Dragon's Lair (1983)

In 1983, two of my great loves came together--Disney animation and video games. Now I know that Dragon's Lair (1983), the first laserdisc videogame, was created by Don Bluth, not Disney, but Bluth was an ex-Disney animator (he jumped ship to form his own studio in the late 70s) and the style and quality of the animation in Dragon's Lair was certainly of the same caliber as any Disney feature from that era.

Dragon's Lair was a huge deal when it hit arcades. It was the first video game to require 50 cents (not the usual quarter) per play, (which spawned instant grumbling from my Dad).

It was also the first video game to commonly have a second monitor installed on the top of the cabinet so people in line (often dozens deep) could watch what was going on.

There's a second monitor on the top of this machine. Trust me.

When Dragon's Lair first arrived, many people felt this was the first glimpse into the future of video games. Of course, we now know that, thanks to the increased sophistication of standard computer-generated graphics, the whole laserdisc revolution was quickly reduced to a short-term fad.

What exactly was a laserdisc video game? It was a very simple interactive movie. You are basically watching a fully animated cartoon unspooling off a laserdisc (kids, just think of it as DVD's fat older brother).

Valiant knight Dirk the Daring must rescue the Princess Daphne by exploring a spooky old castle full of booby traps, trap-doors, giant snakes, bats, and various other monsters and phantoms, before a final showdown in the lair of Singe the dragon.

You are required to trigger the correct control (up, down, left, right, or sword-button) at certain times to keep the show rolling.

You've got a bat in your face.

Hit the wrong button at the wrong time, and the laserdisc advances to a chapter showing your hero getting squished, smashed, drowned, electrocuted, or killed in some other manner appropriate to the particular scene where you messed up.

He should have pressed the button.

As you can imagine, your interaction with the virtual environment was extremely limited, and any control you thought you had over Dirk the Daring was little more than an illusion.

You are basically participating in a sophisticated game of Simon Says. So why was Dragon's Lair such a huge arcade phenomenon? Simple. Here's an example of the state of arcade game graphics circa 1983:

And here's a comparable piece of action as it appears in Dragon's Lair:

Gamers were simply dazzled by the beautiful imagery and the concept of controlling a character in a film, even if the execution fell well short.

While the popularity of laserdisc games fizzled within a few years, the timed button-keypress play-mechanic can still be found today in the modern guitar/rhythm/dance games or in the minigames (combat combinations, lock-picking, etc.) that are found within traditional games.

Of course, with Dragon's Lair, nobody is telling you what button to press or when. You just have to guess using whatever visual clues are on screen, combined with lots of trial and error.

Slice!

Dragon's Lair was popular enough to spawn spin-off merchandising, including trading cards and stickers. The stickers ranged from the motivational...

...to the (ahem) hilarious...


...to the topical (remember, it was 1983. I believe there was a third sticker captioned "Billy Jean" but I couldn't find it).

The back of the stickers features strategy tips.

The trading cards featured a screenshot from the game, partially obscured by a maze. Using the edge of a magic sword (or if you don't have one handy, an enchanted penny or nickel will do), gently scrape off the silver coating, kind of like a lottery card. Try to make your way from one end of the card to the other without uncovering more than 8 skulls and you, uh, "win".