This game, like Dragon's Lair, is basically an interactive cartoon. You are not directly in control of the character, but rather you sort of guide him. You use a controller to decide when he goes in a certain direction and you use a button to tell him when to blast enemies with his ray gun. Unlike Dragon's Lair, this one came after and added a few new wrinkles as it has different paths rather than there being only one correct way...like in Dragon's Lair. However, this one is also a bit difficult at times as it is very unclear at times what to do. I can see this one taking a whole heck of a lot more quarters than did Dragon's Lair for someone to finally conquer the game. With Dragon's Lair, you could actually get through a room or two the first time...I just do not see that happening with this one. You will be lucky to get by an obstacle or two the first time without perishing here. I also played the Sega CD version of this, and I do not think it was a very good conversion.
The story has you as Dexter, also known as Space Ace! You have been hit with the villain Borf's infant ray and you are a bit geeky at the moment. You and your cute sidekick, Kimberly (who constantly gets captured) must stop the evil Borf from turning his strange weapon on the Earth and thus reducing its population to infants. The cartoon actually is good, to bad you are going to be witnessing Space Ace die a lot, especially in the Sega CD version. You will also tire of having to hear the same cutscenes over and over again as you have to replay certain levels numerous times.
So it is fun, but I prefer Dragon's Lair more. This one has a better story, but like I said, it was just a bit easier to figure out what to do in Dragon's Lair than it was here. As a kid I was able to get by some rooms in Dragon's Lair the first time, here I was killed on every screen multiple times! However, the games are close and I think Kimberly was a bit cuter than princess Daphne in Dragon's Lair.
