Back in summer of 1983 I had a life changing event, well I had lots of life changing events in the eighties but this particular one was walking past a Dragon’s Lair machine in my local arcade, needless to say I did a double take. Dragon’s Lair looked like something from another world compared to all the other consoles surrounding it, at the time I didn’t realize the game ran on laser discs and didn’t care much either, all I knew was I was “playing†a cartoon, rather it was playing me. I must have dropped enough quarters into that machine to buy one outright.
Flash forward a year later the follow-up to Dragon’s Lair: ‘Space Ace’ was released and while it was certainly a success, In some ways the magic of seeing animation inside an arcade cabinet was strangely, already old-hat. It was almost as if Don Bluth and the rest of the team had done such a good job with Lair that its follow-up seemed somehow inferior. Sure Space Ace was impressive, and yes the “graphics†looked amazing but by now the limited left, left, wait, wait some more, up, left, wait some more routine was getting tiresome. That said, never under estimate the power of nostalgia.
Late last week the folks at Digital Leisure were kind enough to send over an early review copy of ‘Space Ace’ on Blu-ray and I have to say, sometimes it’s nice to reminisce and re-visit something that made a huge impact on you early in life. The Blu-ray versions of ‘Dragon’s Lair’ and ‘Space Ace’ are faithful adaptations of original arcade versions but with the added benefit of recent digital video remastering, the colors look noticeably improved over recent DVD versions.
Cutting to the chase, I popped the disc into the PS3 and gave it a go on the default settings, nope my reflexes haven’t improved one bit since I was 14 it would appear. I moved back to the root menu and selected difficulty cadet, unlimited lives, and the visual move guide to on. Even with all those “cheats†on I couldn’t manage to get past the first level, yeah pretty embarrassing. It didn’t take long to remember shoving quarter after quarter into those machines in hopes of seeing the next piece of the story. Luckily this time I won’t need a pocket full of quarters.
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