Space Ace

Like Dragon's Lair, Space Ace is composed of numerous individual scenes, which require the player to move the joystick in the right direction or press the fire button at the right moment to overcome the various hazards Dexter/Ace faces. Space Ace introduced a few gameplay enhancements, most notably selectable skill levels and multiple paths through several of the scenes. At the start of the game, the player could select one of three skill levels: "Cadet", "Captain" or "Space Ace" for easy, medium and hard respectively; only by choosing the toughest skill level could the player see all the sequences in the game (only around half the scenes are played on the easiest setting). A number of the scenes had "multiple choice" moments when the player could select how to act, sometimes by deciding which way to turn in a passageway, or by choosing whether or not to react to the on-screen "ENERGIZE" message and transform back into his Ace form.

Most scenes also have separate, horizontally flipped versions. Dexter usually progresses through scenes by avoiding obstacles and enemies, but Ace goes on the offensive, attacking enemies rather than running away; although Dexter does occasionally have to use his pistol on enemies when it is necessary to advance. An example can be seen in the first scene of the game, when Dexter is escaping from Borf's robot drones. If the player presses the fire button at the right moment, Dexter transforms temporarily into Ace and can fight them, whereas if the player chooses to stay as Dexter, the robots' drill attacks must be dodged instead.

Space Ace follows the adventures of the dashing hero Dexter, better known as "Ace". Ace is on a mission to stop the villainous Commander Borf, who is seeking to attack Earth with his "Infanto Ray" to render Earthlings helpless by reverting them into infants. At the start of the game, Ace is partially hit by the Infanto Ray, which reverts him into an adolescent, and Borf kidnaps his female sidekick Kimberly, who thus becomes the game's damsel in distress. It is up to the player to guide Ace, in his adolescent form of Dexter, through a series of obstacles in pursuit of Borf, in order to rescue Kimberly and prevent Borf from using the Infanto Ray to conquer Earth.

However, Dexter has a wristwatch gadget which optionally allows him to "ENERGIZE" and temporarily reverse the effects of the Infanto-Ray, to turn him back into Ace for a short time and overcome more difficult obstacles in a heroic manner. The game's attract mode introduces the player to the story via narration and dialogue.

The animation for Space Ace was produced by the same team that tackled the earlier Dragon's Lair, headed by ex-Disney animator Don Bluth. To keep the production costs down, the studio again chose to use its staff to provide voices for the characters rather than hire actors (one exception is Michael Rye, who reprises his role as the narrator of the attract sequence in Dragon's Lair). Bluth himself provides the (electronically altered) voice of Commander Borf. In an interview about the game, Bluth stated that had the studio been able to afford more professional actors, he thought Paul Shenar would have been more suitable for the role of Borf than himself. The game's animation features some rotoscoping, wherein models were built of Ace's spaceship "Star Pac", his motorcycle, and the tunnel in the game's dogfight sequence, then filmed and traced over to render moving animated images with very realistic depth and perspective.

The game's budget was $2.5 million.

In the United Kingdom, it was the top-selling CD-i game in April 1994.

The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly gave the CD-i version a 7.75 out of 10. They described it as a "pixel perfect" conversion of the arcade game, though they criticized that the game lacks replay value.

Space Ace II: Borf's Revenge is a continuation of the home computer version of Space Ace, mostly featuring content that could not fit in available storage space on said version. It was released for Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS and Macintosh in 1991. An Apple IIGS port was also completed, but never released (detailed IIGS loading instructions appear in the manual for the other ports).

A short-lived cartoon series based on Space Ace was produced in 1984 as part of the Saturday Supercade cartoon block (which was composed of animated shorts based on then-current video games) with Ace voiced by Jim Piper, Dexter voiced by Sparky Marcus, Kimberly voiced by Nancy Cartwright, and Commander Borf voiced by Arthur Burghardt. Twelve Space Ace episodes were produced.