ace

1. A good fellow. 2. A dollar. 3. A one-year jail or prison term.

- american underworld lingo - 1950

In tennis, an ace is when you get a point on one swing. There are two types of commonly referred to aces: Service Ace, and Return Ace. A service ace (or simply ace), is when the ball is not returned from the serve. These are very difficult to accomplish.

A Return ace is when the ball is returned from the serve in such a way that the server cannot volley the ball back to the opponent. These are tough, and are definate crowd pleasers in most high tension matches.

A pilot with 5 aerial victory credits (confirmed kills).

Ace is a field game played at summer day-camps and similar. Although gameplayis fundamentally flawed (the last team to "cash in" on the ace wins, regardless of how many times the other team has.), it is still fairly enjoyable.

Ace is played with two teams on an open field, (although there is a version for woodlands). A cardmaster on each team hands out a card for each person. Whenever someone tags someone else, the person with the highest card gets the two cards to return to the cardmaster, to be re-issued with a new card. "victim"s also get new cards. Someone wiht an ace can be beaten by any card, however if they manage to tag the enemy cardmaster, they take half the deck back to their own cardmaster. Each team's goal is to have as many cards as possible in their cardmaster's deck.

In card games the playing card with a capital "A" on its face is called the ace. Usually it has a large picture of card's suit in the middle.

Depending on which game you are playing the ace can be considered a high card or a low card. In Rummy and Gin Rummy it is played as a low card. In Spades and Bridge it is played high. In poker games you can use the card at the high or low end of a straight. Also, in "low poker" the ace is usually considered to be lowest card.

A companion of the seventh Doctor in Doctor Who.

She first appeared in Dragonfire, where she was a teenaged girl from the 1980s who had been caught in a time storm and ended up on Iceworld, where she meets the Doctor and joins him on his travels. It is later revealed (in The Curse of Fenric) that the time storm was created by Fenric so that she would meet the Doctor, as part of a trap created by Fenric.

Ace was just her nickname, her real name being Dorothy. She was an enthusiastic teenager who liked blowing things up, and was rarely without a canister of nitro nine, an explosive of her own invention. Courageous in situations of physical danger, she was also emotionally quite vulnerable, often forced to deal with feelings of betryal when cought up in the Doctor's elaborate schemes.

In the book Love and War, Ace left the Doctor to fight in the Dalek wars when he used her new boyfriend to defeat the menace of the Hoothi, leading to his death. She rejoined him in Deceit after three years of her time, and was now a much tougher and violet character. She eventually left the Doctor's company for good in Set Piece, taking a time travel device of her own and becomming something of a time vigilante, and assuming the name Dorothee.

Ace was an old arcade game released by Allied & Leisure way back in 1976.

The story

This early black and white arcade title was one of a few simple ideas that the industry was highly smitten with back in those days, tanks, airplanes, and Pong. One notable thing about this game is that it came from the factory set up to cost 50 cents per game, that was pretty ambitious back in 1976, but apparently most operators tried to run it that way.

The game

Each player controls a small airplane with a set of levers (this title is two player only). You must avoid each others shots, and avoid flying into the ground, the sides of the screen, or the top of the screen. If you are shot down or crash then a little parachute guy will escape from your plane and the other player will get a point. You cannot shoot down the parachute man, even though all the advertisements for the game showed the player shooting him down.

This is your basic two player dogfight, with gameplay very similar to the airplane levels on the Atari 2600 Combat cartridge, but without the screen wrapping effect.

The Machine

The Ace cabinet was a standard 1970s style cabaret cabinet, with a black and white monitor and a purple graphical bezel showing some airplanes. The control panel featured 4 two way joysticks, and half of them had fire buttons on top. I have one of these control panels sitting in my closet and the sticks are far more heavy duty than what is usually installed on games. They would have lasted for decades, but games like this went out of style by 1980.

Where to play

This title is emulated by the MAME emulator, but I personally wouldn't bother with it. The game isn't that good, and last time I checked the controls in the game were incorrectly mapped, with MAME having the game being controlled with an 8-way joystick, and not with a pair of levers.

I would not add this to my arcade game collection, unless it was incredibly cheap. The need for two players at once really reduces the amount of use that you would be able to get out of this game in your home. Games like this are really only good for their kitsch value as wacky furnishings, as you certainly won't be playing it. I should know about these games, as I have personally had things like Stunt Cycle and Pong spend years sitting in my living room looking cool, but being entirely unused.

Ace (&?;), n.; pl. Aces (&?;). [OE. as, F. as, fr. L. as, assis, unity, copper coin, the unit of coinage. Cf. As.]

1.

A unit; a single point or spot on a card or die; the card or die so marked; as, the ace of diamonds.

2.

Hence: A very small quantity or degree; a particle; an atom; a jot.

I 'll not wag an ace further.
Dryden.

To bate an ace, to make the least abatement. [Obs.] --
Within an ace of, very near; on the point of. W. Irving.

 

© Webster 1913

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Ace, n.

A single point won by a stroke, as in handball, rackets, etc.; in tennis, frequently, a point won by a service stroke.

 

© Webster 1913