"Ace Lightning and the Carnival of Run of the Mill Gameplay"

I had thought for sure this would be the one review I would write that nobody would ever read, but apparently there are more Ace Lightning fans around than I thought. The number of TV shows that have been adapted into video games are legion. Some have been strange, like the Simpsons or Home Improvement (I'm not kidding), some have been natural, like Dragonball Z, although the adapted games are all over the quality spectrum. Ace Lightning is an odd duck, as the show is reputedly based on the game rather than the other way around.

The story of Ace Lightning the show is about Mark Hollander, a teen boy who's new in town and whose life doesn't get any less complicated when the characters of his favorite video game, Ace Lightning and the Carnival of Doom, come to life and enlist him in their war between good and evil. As to how the story of the game measures up...well, don't play this game for the story, is all I'm saying. The skeletal supervillain Lord Fear is a resident of the 6th dimension but seeks dominion over other worlds and steals the magical amulet of Zoar to escape to other realms. The amulet is broken and one piece falls into the hands of you, Ace Lightning, "foremost of the Lightning Knights," and as long as you have it the other pieces are powerless. As Ace, your job is to penetrate the attractions of the Carnival of Doom, recover Fear's amulet pieces and defeat his team of ne'er-do-well mutant bosses like Googler, the cleverly named Pigface, Anvil, Lady Illusion, and Random Virus, who is actually a Lightning Knight like Ace, but has a bit of a split personality and flip-flops between wanting to help Ace and wanting to kill him.

Ace begins in the main lot of the Carnival of Doom which only serves as a nexus for the various worlds, and Ace can't enter the various other worlds until he has cleared all the sections of the first one that is available and defeated its resident supervillain. So it also goes with each attraction's sub-areas--upon entering one of the four main attractions Ace can only enter one area in it until he explores that area and finds the amulet piece hidden there, and thus unlocks the next area in that world. Doing so involves your extremely typical collecting of tokens ("doom dimes"), finding keys or pushing buttons. You've done it all before. After conquering each level Ace can reenter if he wants but there's no reason to, except for one level that's good for maxing out on extra lives. After acquiring all the world's amulet pieces and beating the boss, Ace can progress to the next world. It's totally linear. And for whatever reason, the game only allows you to save after you clear a level (and not if you replay a level you already cleared). There are three difficulty settings, but the only difference between them I noticed was the number of doom dimes you need to find to access the amulet piece at the end of a level.

The graphics, sound and voices in Ace Lightning aren't bad, although the term "non-descript" comes to mind. Ace and the villains look like they're supposed to, but they have the flat, lifeless features of Sims characters. As for music, there's an admittedly kind of catchy song that plays on the title screen but then looping and generic tunes that play during the levels (if anything does). Environments are spartan and nothing to write home about. Same for the game play, and the level of imagination of the tasks you're assigned. You pick up coins and keys and you jump on switches to open up new areas. That's the game, seriously. And through it all Ace reacts to his surroundings with such imaginative lines as "Yes!" "I need those doom dimes!" and "Another fragment of the amulet!" Someone get that man a pulitzer!

I suppose it's worth bringing up that the game and the show don't match up very well. On TV, Ace can fly, but in the game he has to use trampolines and floating platforms to get around. Ace's wrist blasts, his major firepower on TV, only stun bad guys in this game. For some reason the characters have different voices in the game, and Sparx isn't even in it except for the exposition crawl at the very beginning that identifies the Lightning Knights. And despite what the song that plays on the menu screen and the show's theme of teamwork and helping your friends when they get in trouble might have you think, this is only a one-player game. So actually you do "have to play this game all alooooooooooone!"

What can I say about this game? It isn't exactly bad, but it seems like they were counting on the name to provide all the appeal to buying the game. It's one of the most generic platform games you could ever play, and unless you're a huge Ace Lightning fan, isn't worth tracking down even so you can say you played the real Ace Lightning game.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 08/24/04, Updated 12/13/05