Space Ace (Blu-ray)

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 06:23:34 UTC

Skip It

When I snapped up Space Ace (1984) from our big pile of unloved screeners, I assumed that this was going to be a Don Bluth-directed animated feature I somehow had missed, a Star Wars-influenced theatrical cartoon. Instead, Space Ace turns out to be a Blu-ray disc adaptation of a once-popular video arcade attraction: part-video game, part-interactive movie. In an era dominated by Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and Galaga - Space Ace, with its cell-animation action driven by early laserdisc technology, was definitely a novelty. The Blu-ray disc is undeniably a curiosity, but ultimately not much more than that. It plays like a pop culture footnote; it looks great in high-def and includes some nice extras, but it's basically unwatchable as a "movie" despite attempts to make it so, and even with Blu-ray's technical advances the game itself is inherently primitive and, arguably, wro...Read the entire review

Dragon's Lair (HD DVD)

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 14:42:24 UTC

Rent It

The Game:

I still remember the first time I saw Dragon's Lair. Itwas in 1983, I was in college and I stopped by the Union to blow some ofmy very limited funds on video games rather than studying. When Iwalked in the arcade, there was a huge crowd around a game. Now sometime4 or 5 people would be watching someone who was really on a roll and aboutto break a record, but I had never seen anything like this. I jockeyedfor position and what I saw was astounding. Here was a video gamethat looked just like an animated cartoon. I was blown away.

To get the full effect of what I was seeing, you have to realize thatback in '83 graphics on video games were very crude. Also releasedthat year were the games Spy Hunter and Star Wars:

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Dragon's Lair (Blu-ray)

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 22:30:10 UTC

Rent It

The Game:
It's hard to review Dragon's Lair in this day and age. Even remastered, remixed, and slapped on a high-tech Blu-ray disc, the entire project is still woefully lacking context. To make things a little more clear, Dragon's Lair was conceived by former Disney animator Don Bluth at a time when video games were nothing but tiny sprites on big black screens. Pac-Man and Galaga were state of the art. Now imagine, at this time when a chomping wheel of cheese was eating ghosts, a video game that looked like it came from a fully-staffed animation studio. Don Bluth achieved this in Dragon's Lair, by replacing sprites with pre-recorded animations. Instead of the character responding to your motions, pressing the correct button would load another video with the continuation of the action. If you pressed the wrong button, a video would load showing your death (with several va...Read the entire review

Time Traveler

Thu, 07 Jun 2001 22:44:53 UTC

Rent It

The Review:

Hot on the heels of the success of the video game Dragon's Lair. Sega was looking for the next big thing in gaming. They temporarily found it with Ric Dyer's Hologram Time Traveler. Similar to Dragon's Lair, it used a Laser Disc to store multiple path's of video which allowed players to control the direction the character went. It was a new and novel approach at the time, but never really took off due to a lack of real game-play.

Time Traveler went with live action instead of animation like the previous hit and that led to several problems as well. Unlike animation, the actors were forced to react to things that were not there. This causes problems in the game when things don't quite line up as they should. Also, the sub-par acting and B-movie storyline seemed even worse when acted in real life as opposed to animation.

Despite all of that, Time Traveler was a h...Read the entire review

DVD Talk DVD Reviews

Space Ace (Blu-ray)

Dragon's Lair (HD DVD)

Dragon's Lair (Blu-ray)

Time Traveler