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space ace,don bluth,old school,gaming,games,video games,arcade,coin operated Space Ace - Old School Gaming History Lesson

Space Ace - Old School Gaming History Lesson

posted by dystopianfuturetoday 1 year 5 months 3 weeks ago • 1560 views
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From wiki: Space Ace is a laserdisc video game produced by Don Bluth. It was unveiled in October 1983, just four months after the Dragon's Lair game, then released in Spring 1984, and like its predecessor featured film-quality animation played back from a laserdisc.

The gameplay too is similar, requiring the player to move the joystick or press the fire button at key moments in the animated sequences to govern the hero's actions. Like Dragon's Lair, the gameplay of Space Ace requires the player to move the joystick in the right direction or press the fire button at the right moment in order to avoid the various hazards Ace/Dexter faces.

Space Ace introduced a few gameplay enhancements, most notably selectable skill levels and multiple paths through several of the scenes. At the start of the game the player could select one of three skill levels; "Cadet", "Captain" or "Ace" for easy, medium and hard respectively - only by choosing the toughest skill level could the player see all the sequences in the game (only around half the scenes are played on the easiest setting).

A number of the scenes had "multiple choice" moments when the player could choose how to act, sometimes by choosing which way to turn in a passageway, or by choosing whether or not to react to the on-screen "Energize!" message and transform back into Ace. All scenes also have separate reverse versions of each other. Dexter usually progresses through scenes by avoiding obstacles and enemies, but Ace goes on the offensive, attacking enemies rather than running away. For example, in the first scene of the game, Dexter is escaping from Borf's robot drones, and if the player presses the fire button at the right moment, Dexter transforms temporarily back into Ace and can fight them, whereas if the player chooses to stay as Dexter the robots' drill attacks must be dodged instead.

The animation for Space Ace was produced by the same team that tackled the earlier Dragon's Lair, headed by ex-Disney animator Don Bluth. To keep the production costs down, the studio again chose to use its staff to provide voices for the characters rather than hire actors (one exception is Michael Rye who narrates the attract sequence, as he did on Dragon's Lair). Don Bluth himself provides the (digitally altered) voice of Commander Borf. The game's animation features some rotoscoping, wherein models were built of Ace's spaceship "Star Pac", his motorcycle, and the tunnel in the game's dogfight sequence, then filmed and traced over to render moving animated images with very realistic depth and perspective.

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Moving this video to dystopianfuturetoday's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.


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