Space Ace - Atari ST / STE

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Hundgirrid Channel

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Published on November 23, 2023 5:30:02 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuGW5JFZUl8

Game:

Space Ace (1983)

Duration: 4:15

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16

In this video, Space Ace, released in 1990 for the Atari ST by Readysoft.
The evil commander Borf is about to conquer earth with its lethal weapon the "Infanto Ray", a weapon that morphs you back to a baby. But he doesn't want to be alone in its conquer so he kidnaps the beautiful Kimberly, Ace's fiancee. We must help Ace/Dexter free Kimberly and save the world from evil Borf's plan.
Based on Cinematronics 1984 coin-op, Space Ace, a game that is not a "common game", lands on the ST in a fairly cut version. To make the port, the programmers had to cut the original coin-op scenes because they were made on a large laser disc that contained several megabytes of data/graphics/music/sounds fx. Additionally single sided drive owners could only play reduced amount of scenes. Despite the hardware limitations, the result is a good work with superb digitized graphics (it also supports STe extended colour palette) and amazing digitized in-game soundtrack/FX at 6KHz, but the game also suffers from low framerate, that doesn't help you see what happens on screen and decide what action Ace must do. IMHO, the main problem of this game, inherited from the original coin-op, is that it's 100% focused on graphics and sounds and 0% on interaction with the player, because you don't control every action of Ace/Dexter, rather you control his reactions to the events that happens around him in every scene: make the right joystick moves at the right time and you're good to go. A good and expensive tech demo, awesome to see and listen between disks accesses, but with very poor playability.
Here you'll find full auto-play game from loading screens to end game scene.

Fun fact: You can also save the game anytime you want, dramatically reducing its already short longevity.

All footage taken from original hardware machines and upscaled to 1080P.

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