Yet while several other games were produced and released in a similar fashion, ultimately, Laserdisc was not to be the format of choice for advanced gaming, leaving 'Space Ace' (like 'Dragons Lair' before it) a technological oddity -- not really a video game as traditionally defined, and not really a movie, either. Without falling squarely in one or the other camp, one might assume that the game would have just faded away, but instead it has enjoyed a curiously strong afterlife in recent years, both as a traditional PC-based game and (more successfully) as a light-on-the-interactivity standard-def DVD game.
Following the success of 'Dragon's Lair' in 1982, Don Bluth Studios quickly went to work creating a follow-up that would again rock the arcade world. What emerged two years later was 'Space Ace,' not so much a sequel to 'Lair' but its cosmic cousin. It transposed the same basic story and gameplay to a futuristic setting, with players once again navigating an intrepid hero, Space Ace, through various scenarios while trying to rescue the beautiful damsel-in-distress Kimberly from the clutches of the dastardly Commander Borf. 'Space Ace' also utilized the identical technology of 'Lair,' with its unique hybrid of traditional hand-drawn animation, simple player joystick commands and a LaserDisc engine driving the the whole shebang, turning 'Space Ace' a truly one-of-a-kind creation.
