"Best of the Bluth-animated games"

Space Ace

Philips, SuperClub, and ICDI for CD-i, requires digital-video card

PROS: Stunning animation, strong characterization and sense of humor, fun to watch

CONS: Repetitive, arguably more fun to watch than to play

There are two kinds of responses to the trilogy of Don Bluth cel-animated games that first landed on arcade laser-discs over a decade ago. The first adores the games' beautiful animation, fast game-play, anything-can-happen wackiness, and wacky humor. The other abhors the repetitive game-play, rote memorization, and lack-of-control.

In the ultra-faithful CD-i version of ''Space Ace'', both arguments remain valid.

[Next four paragraphs largely from memory -- corrections welcome]

For those just coming in, Don Bluth was the leader of a group of artists who left Disney in the early 80's when the company was ekeing out an animated film every three years, including such paint-by-numbers films as ''The Rescuers'' and ''The Fox and The Hound.'' Bluth's group wanted to restore the excitement of animation, and proceeded to make ''The Secret of NIMH'', a partially-successul film that didn't make Bluth enough money to move on to another feature.

But perhaps sensing that video-games based on ''Space Invaders'' were wearing out their welcome, arcade game-maker Cinematronics approached Bluth about producing animation for a new kind of game. The game would consist of a video-disc player, a monitor, and a joystick. When the on-screen character needed to make a move to avoid disaster, the player would need to use the joystick to move the player in that direction. If he or she made the correct move, the animation continued with the successful move -- if not, it skipped ahead to a scene of the character dying. With fast action and intuitive moves, it would appear as if the player was controlling the animated character.

The first of these games was the medieval adventure, ''Dragon's Lair''. It was followed by the goofy space-opera ''Space Ace''. Animation for a Dragon's Lair II was produced at a cost of over $1 million dollars, but Cinematronics' bankruptcy kept the game from being released until the early 90's.

All of them have been intermittently re-released for computers and home video-game systems as time has gone on. A 1986 version (for the Texas Instruments home computer, I believe) required you to attach a video-disc player, which paused every time a move was required. Diskette-based versions produced for PCs, Amigas, and Ataris in the late 80's compressed the video, cut the frame rate, and split each game into two different $40 titles.

With the CD-i and its digital-video card, a home system is genuinely capable of matching the arcade original in terms of action, speed, and clarity. All the arcade game's scenes are here, as are the ''mirror versions'' (a right-left reversal of a scene, which makes replaying the same scene less repetitive), all in glorious full-motion video. The only significant differences are the deletion of a difficulty button (which omitted some scenes for ''easy'' players), and the appearance of occasional non-moving ''frames'' superimposed on some shots mid-way through the game, presumably to shrink the size of the compressed video data.

Half of the people who've ever played ''Space Ace'' are now thoroughly geeked. The other half are thinking ''so what?''

In Space Ace, you play a beefy space hero named Ace who's been turned into a wimp named Dexter after being hit with something called the ''infanto-ray''. In the game, Dexter/Ace tries to rescue his scantily-clad girlfriend Kimberly, track down the the villain Borf, and destroy the infanto-ray.

It's a loony premise, and the sharp characterization, reactions, and one-liners make it a real hoot. OK, so it's completely sexist and obnoxious -- it's funny.

Gameplay is a pretty simple matter -- a scene starts playing, and when Dexter is in peril or needs to make some move, you press the joypad to move up, down, right or left, or press the button to fire your gun. If you're right, Dexter makes the move and moves on. If not, you watch him die and lose one of your 3 lives (more are earned during the game).

To help you out, brief flashes of light pop up intermittently in the game, indicating the direction you should move. This can eliminate the annoyance of playing a scene over and over to find the one right move, but can turn the game into a simple ''follow the flash'' chase.

At various points in the game, the screen becomes red-filtered and the word ''energize'' appears at the bottom of the screen. Pressing the button at this point turns Dexter into Ace -- ignoring the option leaves you as Dexter. In virtually every case, the sequence can be successfully completed either way, although Ace will generally solve more problems by shooting, while wimpy Dexter runs away. This allows multiple paths through the game, although I imagine most players will pick a favorite option for each scene and play that way consistently.

It's possible to see the move you need to make, press the control, and die anyways... if you move before the machine is scanning the controller. To alleviate this problem, I suggest repeatedly tapping the direction you want to move, rather than simply pressing it once.

The game's sequences are always played in the same order -- Kimberly's kidnapping, a flying sequence, a race through a space station, etc. Every time you finish a sequence, your score and remaining lives are displayed, and move on to the next sequence.

More importantly, when you die, you return to the beginning of the scene you died in (rather than restarting the game). To balance that, no save-game option is provided.

A pause is available between sequences, but for some bizarre reason it consumes points every minute. Why players should be punished for pausing is one thing, but to lose points is ludicrous, since few players will care about points as much as they care about how far into the game they get.

Since you play the game all the way through, the same way, every time, getting past a tricky sequence requires you to play through the entire game up to that point. If you can't figure out the right move in a certain situation, it gets repetitive. Repetitiveness in the game is unavoidable, and by the time you make it to the final scenes, you'll be sick of playing through the first scenes.

But what really turns off detractors is the concept of controlling Dexter, Ace, and at times Kimberly. Moving left, for example, only moves Dexter left if that's the way to avoid a hazard. If that's not what the game wants you to do -- either because it's not looking for a move or it wants something else -- Dexter doesn't go that way, he either keeps going or dies. For clueless players, there's a real lack of feedback, defying the richness of the sensory input.

But if you do get a sense that you're controlling Dexter, it's unlike any other game you've ever played.

If you liked the arcade game, you'll like the home version, assuming you don't finish it too quickly. If you're unsure, try to play a demo before dropping $40 on the game. Some people love it, some people hate it.

I still laugh, and dodge in my sofa as the bad guys zoom in... count me in the ''like it'' category.
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(c) 1995 Chris Adamson

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/01/01, Updated 04/01/01