MarzGurl Loves Don Bluth: Space Ace

Marzgurl loves space ace

Release Date
August 22, 2011
Running Time
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(The clips from the game are shown)

MarzGurl (vo): After the success of 1983's Dragon's Lair, it only made sense to follow up that success with a remarkably similar game. Like I just said, the game is remarkably similar to Dragon's Lair, though it's definitely a unique Don Bluth animation in its own right. It's an obvious addition to Don Bluth's portfolio, I mean, the characters look like Dirk the Daring and Princess Daphne cosplaying as spacemen. So these are our heroes, Kimberly and Dexter, otherwise known as Ace. Their enemy, Borf is some blue guy from space who wants to destroy Earthlings for some reason. So it's obvious, right? You have to save the Earth from Borf, only it's not that simple; Borf has hit Ace with the Infanto Ray, which turns Ace into a kid. On top of that, Borf kidnaps Kimberly, of course, so you, the hero Ace, have to struggle through going back and forth between being a kid and being an adult, rescue Kimberly, and save the world from getting hit by the super Infanto Ray. As far as gameplay is concerned, yeah, it's ridiculously similar to Dragon's Lair, except it's hard. I mean, in comparison to Dragon's Lair, this sucker is hard. Now the cool addition to this game is that the player was given the option to choose one of three levels of difficulty, but I don't know, maybe I just suck that bad, but in personal opinion, I found the easiest difficulty to still be pretty hard, and on top of that, if you choose any difficulty other than the hardest one, then you don't get to see the entirety of the animation. Well, crap, that's friggin hard! There's something constantly happening on the screen that you have only a split second to respond to, it's insane! Frankly, I think the animation is awesome; if you wanted to take a direct peek at something that just screams 1980s, this would be one title I'd highly recommend. There's all the space and random shapes and colors everywhere and a little bit of unnecessary 3D rendering and a synthesized soundtrack. It's totally awesome and the animators made no short use of giving the gamer a good look right up Kimberly's skirt. Some hardcore rotoscoping was getting introduced with this game, mostly with vehicles Ace would drive. Apparently, there were models built and filmed of the vehicles that you'd eventually see in game, and by drawing on top of what was filmed, they were able to get some pretty decently realistic depth of movement. Okay, yeah, I can live with that. One of the harder things to live with, though is the voice acting; just like in Dragon's Lair, there really weren't any voice actors hired to play the roles. In fact, Borf is actually voiced by Don Bluth himself; it's just that his voice has undergone some distortion.

(A clip is shown of Borf and Ace fighting while Kimberly screams tied to a falling platform)

MarzGurl (vo): The major problem with the bad voice acting is that there's just so much more of it in Space Ace than there was in Dragon's Lair, making the bad all that more noticeable.

(Some examples of the very noticeably stilted dialogue are shown)

Kimberly: Dexter, you're late!

Ace: Call me Ace, huh? Hop on.

Kimberly: Thanks, I'll walk.

Kimberly: Dexter, the Infanto Ray is about to be fired at Earth!

Ace: Call me Ace, huh? Where's it located?

Kimberly: In the center of the complex.

Ace: Can you get us in there?

Kimberly: Yes.

Ace: Lugnuts! Borf knows I'm here?

Kimberly: Yes, he's geared for battle!

Ace: Let's say we shoot Borf with his own Infanto Ray.

Kimberly: I guess...

Ace: Let's say we have dinner together.

Kimberly: Get serious!

Ace: I am!

MarzGurl (vo): The ending is somewhat bizarre-oh, and by the way, this is the only spoiler warning you're getting-but Borf ultimately gets hit by his own Infanto Ray and it literally turns him into an infant, and what do they do? They keep him. They keep him! And it looks like Kimmy here is ready to raise it as her own child, how creepy is that?! Like, this is the guy who was just about to destroy the world and your girlfriend wants to jump straight into keeping him and raising him as her child with you! Ace, don't be a fool, get out of that relationship while you still can!

Space Ace wouldn't be Don Bluth's last mark on the gaming world, but after this game, he would then go on to produce some other amazing animated features. We'll talk about An American Tail next week.

(The credits are shown with the theme music for Space Ace playing)
