Welcome to Space Ace, an action game where you steer an exceptionally fragile ship through narrow corridors (and space, occasionally).
The intro screen shows promise: Somebody decided to build what looks like a public restroom in space and added giant Tesla coils for dramatic effect. The geometry is purposefully lopsided, presumably to unsettle potential visitors so they don't stay there for too long. I guess there are also showers, and that's a soap ball in the top right corner. While the central spaceship's design is quite awesome, I'm not sure where it fits into the game, as the vessel you get to fly certainly looks nothing like this.
There is something extraordinary weird about the music that's playing here. While it never sounds off-key or outright wrong, it is sorely in need of some proper structure. Throughout the tune, it feels like the musician got bored of whatever melody he was working on and then just switched to something else for a couple of beats. This happens so frequently that the result is a confusing, meandering mess with abrupt transitions and drums that erratically change tempo until they seem to stumble over themselves.
If you thought the game's name wasn't shown prominently enough during the intro, then don't worry; the title screen has got you covered. Apart from the constantly jumping, double-sized sprite logo, the scrolling credits in the lower half also compete for the viewer's eyes. I feel there is a special place reserved for people who pluralize "coding" and spell the word with an x. That said, almost anything in the credits ends with an x, so they were at least consistent.
In stark contrast to the anarchy that was the intro's music, the track that is played here is properly structured and quite awesome. It starts slow with a menacing tone, and once the drums set in I can't help but feel excited about what awaits me. In fact, I vividly remember playing this particular track at full volume so I could record it on a cassette tape (Twelve year-old me hadn't as of yet figured out line-in cables). My mother wasn't particularly pleased and promptly ruined my recording attempt by shouting over it.
Anyway, let me apply pressure to the fire button and get on with the action:
But first, story time, presented in impressively dense Textwall-O-Vision.
It's quite obvious this was written by somebody whose first language isn't English, thus I won't hark too much on the misspellings and strange phrasing. I'll try to summarize the backstory, but it's all rather confusing: Scientists get beamed on and off a newly discovered alien vessel. Then the player character gets beamed on board while being enclosed in a small capsule (?). Angry aliens appear, and the player takes flight and tries to escape through a planet's system of underground tunnels that are too small for the "short" alien ships to follow. Huh.
The story doesn't matter anyway, as it is hardly mentioned during the game. Space Ace is meant to be played, not analyzed for its narrative. So let's jump right into the action...
... right after this very shiny Get Ready screen that gets accompanied by an ominous, swelling tone. I was ready two screens ago, but let's humor the game and press the fire button again.
If you were all hyped-up and ready for some high-speed, action-packed chase through subterranean tunnels, then seeing the first level will bring you back to reality. The bleak, sanitized reality of a hospital bathroom from the looks of it.
The thing in the top left that resembles a sad frog head is your escape capsule. It's admittedly a bit underwhelming compared to the ship that was shown in the intro, but you're trying to escape with your life, not to look cool.
The goal is very simple: Get to the exit without touching any walls or other obstacles. Thankfully, there is no gravity, and the ship's controls are not inertia-based. That means, if you stop moving the joystick, the sprite also stops immediately. On the downside, the ship only knows two states, total standstill and ludicrous speed, which makes pixel-precise maneuvering rather fiddly.
The music here is the same as what was played on the title screen. I'm not complaining, though. It's a good track, and it adds some tension to the gameplay.
The first level isn't very hard. Even though there is a time limit (represented by the aggressively blinking fuel gauge in the bottom right corner), you would have to get physically distracted by somebody for more than a minute to run out of fuel.
That said, I already had a lot of trouble with the first level when I played it as a kid. Space Ace is one of a few games that are near-impossible to play on my original C64. To show you what I mean, here's what the first level looked like for me:
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| Who turned off the lights? |
While it may appear that the game suddenly got a lot easier, I can assure you that all the walls are still present, even though they're not visible. At first, I did not understand that this was a bug, so I assumed the game expected me to figure out where the walls were purely by trial and error. I started attaching duct tape to my monitor to mark spots where I had crashed into something, and I eventually made it to the exit. It's safe to say, this was the only stage I ever managed to finish that way.
 $E544Older C64 models handle the clearing of the screen slightly differently which can cause character graphics to not be visible. If you want to know if your C64 is an old model with this issue, you can do the following: Start the computer, then type POKE 1024,1 and hit ENTER. If you've got a newer C64 model, an 'A' becomes visible in the top left corner. On an old C64, however, the letter remains invisible, even though it is there. The reason for this difference lies in the screen-clearing routine at $E544 (accessible from BASIC with SYS 58692): On an old model, clearing the screen uses the current background color (from address $D021) as the screen clearing color. On a newer C64, the current text color ($0286) is used instead. The reason for this difference was a bug in an early version of the VIC-II chip that caused random pixels of foreground color to flicker on and off. Commodore didn't have enough time to fix the issue and instead made sure that clearing the screen would use the background color (and make the flickering pixels invisible). Later models did not exhibit this bug, thus the screen-clearing routine got adjusted. Since this wasn't a very well-known difference, some games that made use of the screen-clearing routine did not look properly on my C64. Space Ace won't be the last title on this blog with this problem. |
After making it through one of the tunnels, I get to play a bonus round which is quite a change in scenery:
I have to steer my escape capsule through what the game calls a meteorbelt [sic]. I think the aim is to collect as many bonus items as possible while avoiding the asteroids. If, despite my best efforts, I manage to destroy my ship, the bonus round ends, but I don't lose an actual life.
The same title music is played here as well, but it directly skips to the frantic section of the track which, again, matches the action on the screen quite well.
I'm not sure how this part fits into the story, though, because afterward, I'll be right back in the underground tunnels as if I never left. Maybe it's visualizing the protagonist's idea that a romp through an asteroid belt could be a good plan to shake off some of his pursuers. Since I usually end up wrecking the escape capsule, it's probably a good thing he never seriously considers escaping this way.
As far as I can tell, the scoring for this part is completely broken: I played the same bonus round several times (via a save state), and no matter how many bonus symbols I collected, I always ended up with a score of 1202 when I finally crashed into a space rock. It seems I just get my current score doubled, no matter how well I perform. What's worse, if I manage to survive long enough without crashing into anything, the bonus round ends and I get no points at all.
From here on out, I'll skip the bonus rounds and just go through the levels in order:
LEVEL 2
The second level is harder to navigate, mainly thanks to its diagonal tunnels. There are also some animated sprites that look like steam spouts which are as deadly as the walls. Is the escape capsule made out of cardboard? In any case, you can see me struggling with the twitchy controls and touching a corner which results in my vessel's complete disintegration. Maybe the alternative escape through the asteroids isn't such a bad idea after all.
LEVEL 3
Judging by the new color scheme, I think we've discovered the planet's nuclear waste storage. I made a valiant effort to reach the exit on the first try but got thwarted by another corner. If the capsule were just a little bit slower, it'd make precise movement so much easier.
LEVEL 4
Level 4 ups the game by introducing mobile rockets. Thankfully, they move rather slowly, which makes dodging them not too hard. I still managed to bump into one, but that was just me not paying attention. This stage also features two items that can be picked up. The F symbol increases the fuel gauge by 100, and the B symbol adds 15 points to the bonus counter (below the score display). I have no idea what the bonus is for, as it is never added to the score.
LEVEL 5
Nothing fancy here, just more moving obstacles and bonus items. The only reason I haven't run out of lives yet is because I reload a save state every time I smash my ship, and then I keep on trying until I can get to the exit unscathed.
Incidentally, the Game Over screen is worth a mention, as it features an awesome SID rendition of an electric guitar. It also calls the player a "sorry guy", but that's down to translation issues.
LEVEL 6
Level 6 contains a platform that teleports the player to another stage at random. And I mean random, as it can warp you right to the final level or even backward to the second stage, if you are unlucky.
I got an extraordinarily helpful warp to the next stage.
LEVEL 7
I wouldn't have minded skipping this one, as it appears we're wading through the sewers section. This is what Amstrad and Spectrum owners think all C64 games look like.
I'm playing with the keyboard here. If I were playing on real hardware, I probably would have surrenderred by now. Moving in diagonals without accidentally shifting a few pixels horizontally or vertically is really hard to pull off when using an actual joystick.
LEVEL 8
Oh look, more diagonals. Oh look, I crashed again. Joy.
I think I'm about done with this game. Luckily, there are only two more stages to go.
LEVEL 9
The penultimate level showers the player with goodies. I skipped all of them, even the extra lives, because I didn't see the point in getting them when there is only one more level to play. Can you tell I kind of wanted this ordeal to be over soon?
LEVEL 10
Hm, maybe I should've picked up some extra lives after all. The final boss, if you want to call it that, is a bouncy ball that needs to be dodged. I almost managed to get to the exit, but at the last moment my capsule got touched by the ball's elastic softness and promptly disintegrated. I think that summarizes the game pretty aptly.
What happens if I complete the last level successfully? Whatever it is, I'm sure it'll be heart-warming and rewarding in a magical way:
Eh, better than nothing at all, I suppose.
CONCLUSION
And that's Space Ace. Is it a fun game? Not particularly, no. The gameplay is rather shallow and could be achieved with a BASIC program just as well (minus the fancy effects). The controls are very twitchy, and they are the main reason why navigating the narrow corridors is challenging at all. The name Space Ace is also weirdly inappropriate, as most of the game takes place in tunnels, and the few times I'm actually in space, I only get points for crashing into asteroids. I don't think I'd get a medal for that.
The scoring doesn't work as was likely intended. At the end of each level, the remaining fuel is added to the score, and in the following bonus round, the same number is added again, but only if I crash into an asteroid. None of the bonus items have any discernible effect on the score, and the separate bonus counter does nothing. Not that getting points matters in any way, but in a game as simple as Space Ace I'd at least expect the scoring to function properly.
The ingame graphics are ok but nothing special. I don't like that each level is essentially presented in monochrome. In Multicolor Character Mode, three colors have to be shared across the entire screen, but one can be picked individually for each character block. Thus the tiles could at least have some color variation within the same level.
For me, the best part of Space Ace is the title/ingame music. It starts out slow and conveys a very ominous mood that fits the tunnel sections quite well. It then goes into action mode which is very appropriate for the asteroid (I mean meteorbelt) sections. I'm tempted to say the music deserves a better game.
All in all, this is another C64 title where you don't miss much if you never get to play it.
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