Introducing Ace Armstrong Vs. The Alien Scumbags!

Hi, I’m Al Evans, Senior Producer at Laughing Jackal, and I’m super-excited to announce the release of our latest PSN minis title: Ace Armstrong vs. the Alien Scumbags!, a brutally tough old-school shooter like they used to make, but with lots of modern-day bells and whistles!

We were inspired to recreate that awesome feeling of achievement to be had from finally burning all the way through games like Gradius, G-Darius, or Thunderforce (to name but three classics), while still injecting the game with our own unique identity.
Ace features an eye-popping cartoon art style, inspired by the greatest sci-fi TV series and cartoons of the 1950s and ’60s (think ‘Duck Dodgers’ for some idea). We’ve really gone to town on this one, as you can see in the seriously epic trailer below:

[viddler id=16ad167d w=545 h=327 playertype=simple]

Pretty exciting, eh? ;)
Ace also features some seriously tight-but-punishing gameplay and a unique weapons system; instead of collecting power-ups, Ace must down enemies using his standard cannons and then hoover up the swirly, colourful leftovers using the awesome power of his Recyl-o-Ray! That done, he can turn the Scumbags’ own weapons against them!

Ace, our hero, must battle against a dozen kinds of Scumbag – psychopathic cephalopods with see-through freaking heads. He’ll need to master a mean-as-hell mother ship, blast through a dangerous asteroid field, destroy a rampaging robot on a factory ship, take down Generalissimo Scumbag on the enemy home world, and then (if he’s still on one piece) enter Dimension X to take down the true menace behind the Scumbag invasion force – clue: this enemy may or may not resemble a HUGE octopus with a see-through head. ;)
Ace’s levels feature wave after wave of evil Scumbags that show no mercy. Expect to seriously exercise your trigger finger – this is a workout for even the toughest gamer. This game is going to hurt your pride before it lets you into its heart. ;)

You can keep abreast of all things Ace-related, as well as our other awesome games by checking out the Laughing Jackal blog
We’ve all worked really hard to make Ace Armstrong vs. the Alien Scumbags! both great fun and a real challenge to those who fancy themselves as ‘1337s4uc3’ gamers.
I hereby lay down a challenge to anyone who can match my awesome skills. I’ll be posting level play throughs on the blog in the weeks after launch, so man up and I’ll see you there! Good luck!
Can’t remember all that? Here are some of AAvtAS’ coolest features!

• Brutally tough old-school side-scrolling shooter.
• Cool power ups – tri-shot, laser, burst, scattergun and more!
• More than a dozen different flavours of Scumbag, and five HUGE bosses to defeat.
• 3 fearsome difficulty levels – sorry, but even ‘Rookie’ makes baby kittens cry.
• Great, cartoon art style and a truly awesome soundtrack!

Ace Amstrong vs. the Alien Scumbags! is exclusive to PlayStation minis and available on PlayStation Store from Wednesday 6 October 2010 for £3.99 / €4.99.