Playing Dragon's Lair for the for first time

[jhd]

I was 12 and a massive video game fan when Dragon's Lair was launched in 1983. No local arcade had it then, or ever (though we eventually got DL II in the early-1990s). I remember seeing this game on a TV news story, and I was very excited to play an interactive cartoon.

 

In Spring 1984, on a drive down the East Coast to Florida on the I-95, we stopped at the South of the Border. The video arcade there had the fabled Dragon's Lair (and a line-up of people waiting to play it). My $.50 lasted me about a minute -- I had utterly no idea how to play the "game", and I did not realize that there was such very minimal interactivity. I doubt that I got past the first screen.

[VectorGamer]

My local bowling alley got Dragon's Lair when it came out. The first time I played it I was confused and never played it again.

[+Cafeman]

I bought the issue of Joystick magazine with the Dragon's Lair strategies. So even the first time i played it, i had an idea how to beat a few rooms. It didnt take too many coins before I could beat the game. I got applause one time. Every mall arcade had this game as well as the Johnstown Richland Showtime Pizza arcade.

[Flojomojo]

I think I finally got to the end on a 1990s CD machine, either the Sega CD or Jaguar CD. Painful game. The "new" Xbox 360 version is very smooth and slick, though. Why do I still bother with it? It must be burned into the parts of my brain that were formed when I was thirteen years old.

[spacecadet]

I remember when it came out; there was always a large crowd around the machine at my local arcade. I guess there were two minds about it even at the time, though; some people thought the technology behind it was amazing (you could play an actual cartoon!), while others just thought it wasn't any actual fun. We still have this debate today; it's basically the graphics vs. gameplay debate.

 

Anyway, at the time I was very young so I was impressed with how it looked. I remember describing it to a slightly older guy I knew, and getting really excited telling him it looked "totally real" (by which I meant like a real cartoon). When he realized I was talking about a cartoon, he was no longer impressed.

 

But I played it a lot for the first month or so it was out. I was determined to get to the end. I used to take $10 (my allowance) to my local arcade every week and blow all of it, and for that month or so I probably spent 90% of it on Dragon's Lair. I did get pretty far but never to the end. And eventually I just got tired of it and also pretty frustrated. I think with all the use, the machine at my arcade started wearing out and control inputs weren't registering all that precisely. And that *kills* that game. If you hit the joystick at just the right time and the game doesn't register it and you die as a result, it's *really* frustrating.

 

So I did quit playing. And now I really don't have any desire to play it again whenever a remake or something comes out. Without the novelty of the fully hand drawn graphics as a new draw, there's really nothing else to make the game fun or interesting.

[RodLightning]

I was probably 14 years old when I played it for the first time. Showbiz pizza was the first place to have a machine. I remember playing it a few times and running out of quarters.

 

I memorized maybe a half dozen patterns before I got tired of spending money on it. I never came anywhere close to finishing the game. In coming years, I would sometimes play through the screens I knew, if I saw a machine somewhere like Aladdin's Castle or Diamond Jim's.

Over time all the Dragon's Lair machines disappeared and I lost interest.

 

I do have a DVD player version of the game and also a PC version. I have never bothered to play either of them much. I have the Daphne emulator here somewhere and will probably some day try that some more.

Does anyone else reading have a play-at-home version of DL or Space Ace and still play it today?

[Inky]

DL really isn't all that fun. As we mentioned on an early episode of Pie Factory, it's basically the arcade equivalent of a "choose your own adventure" novel.

[zzip]

I was 12 and a massive video game fan when Dragon's Lair was launched in 1983. No local arcade had it then, or ever (though we eventually got DL II in the early-1990s). I remember seeing this game on a TV news story, and I was very excited to play an interactive cartoon.

 

In Spring 1984, on a drive down the East Coast to Florida on the I-95, we stopped at the South of the Border. The video arcade there had the fabled Dragon's Lair (and a line-up of people waiting to play it). My $.50 lasted me about a minute -- I had utterly no idea how to play the "game", and I did not realize that there was such very minimal interactivity. I doubt that I got past the first screen.

 

My local arcade had it, and it was only a quarter! I never got any far, but the visuals were mind-blowing for the time. Although I liked Space Ace better.. a little more interactivity.

 

I was probably 14 years old when I played it for the first time. Showbiz pizza was the first place to have a machine. I remember playing it a few times and running out of quarters.

 

I memorized maybe a half dozen patterns before I got tired of spending money on it. I never came anywhere close to finishing the game. In coming years, I would sometimes play through the screens I knew, if I saw a machine somewhere like Aladdin's Castle or Diamond Jim's.

Over time all the Dragon's Lair machines disappeared and I lost interest.

 

I do have a DVD player version of the game and also a PC version. I have never bothered to play either of them much. I have the Daphne emulator here somewhere and will probably some day try that some more.

Does anyone else reading have a play-at-home version of DL or Space Ace and still play it today?

 

I have them on Wii and still play them from time to time. They bring back a rush of nostalgia, but the game play doesn't stay interesting very long.

[Tanooki]

Good luck on your video gaming s&m adventure because that's about what it is. The game is sheer beauty to the eyes and even more parts utter torture. Unless you got an eidetic memory and can commit every single motion for every random screen that pops up and repeat it on the fly with almost near perfect timing this game will infuriate the crap out of you. It was the true bastion of quarter pigging at its best in that day because it didn't matter how fast you were or strong in dodging things like any other game, this one came all down to near perfect timing and perfect memory of every move needed to clear all the areas.

 

Later releases like on the Wii package would at least have the courtesy to change it into a god of war like situation with the direction/button pop ups needed to clear, yet it was barely easier as the very picky timing still stood, but at least you had a chance if you don't have a photographic recollection of every move needed.

[zzip]

Good luck on your video gaming s&m adventure because that's about what it is. The game is sheer beauty to the eyes and even more parts utter torture. Unless you got an eidetic memory and can commit every single motion for every random screen that pops up and repeat it on the fly with almost near perfect timing this game will infuriate the crap out of you. It was the true bastion of quarter pigging at its best in that day because it didn't matter how fast you were or strong in dodging things like any other game, this one came all down to near perfect timing and perfect memory of every move needed to clear all the areas.

 

Later releases like on the Wii package would at least have the courtesy to change it into a god of war like situation with the direction/button pop ups needed to clear, yet it was barely easier as the very picky timing still stood, but at least you had a chance if you don't have a photographic recollection of every move needed.

 

That reminds me of this video on Dragon's Lair, it's hilarious:

[NE146]

I bought the issue of Joystick magazine with the Dragon's Lair strategies.

 

Joystik magazine. But yeah same here man.. I knew the moves somewhat before even trying the game but could never be up to the task of forking out a buck to play.

 

I started diving deep into the game when the Gameboy Advance version came out, which while isn't the greatest port, I still think is a pretty incredible feat. Though these days if I want to play it I use the Daphne port on Xbox.

 

The thing I learned about Dragons Lair is the version a lot of us played (F2) was kind of broken with the sequencing all mixed up. There's version 1.2 which fixes a lot of it.. while 2.0 is apparently "the way" it should have been done. All playable within Daphne of course.

[toiletunes]

I was 8. I didn't get it. I had more fun watching someone else play it than trying to do it myself.

[Tanooki]

 

That reminds me of this video on Dragon's Lair, it's hilarious:

No doubt on that video. I went to youtube for memories and that's the first one that popped up with a few others, but being 1080p and recognizing Bluth's face I went for it. It's rare youtube is comedy gold for me but that was damn good and relatable.

 

The only DL game I own now is that insanely wicked GBC conversion of the laserdisc. Still blows my mind they got basically that whole game into a 4MB chip. That clip got me thinking I should check out the Android, maybe iOS version, just not sure.

[dgdgagdae]

 

I have them on Wii and still play them from time to time. They bring back a rush of nostalgia, but the game play doesn't stay interesting very long.

I just checked eBay - that's a pricey one!

[+Cafeman]

Joystik magazine. .

Auto Correct strikes again! How will I live with the shame!

[NE146]

No need for shame. Intention was 100% friendly

 

That said.. I was just looking at the scans of that article.. the files were small and crappily scanned at the time, so I figured, why not post it!

 

[+Cafeman]

Yep! That's it! I haven't seen those in a long time.

 

No need for shame. Intention was 100% friendly

 

 

Yep, just being witty of course. I'm not that fragile. But , Auto-Correct is really exasperating at times!

 

[Inky]

I honestly think the Coleco ADAM version of Dragon's Lair is a great game,and I enjoy it more than the arcade game.

[HammR25]

I was 11 and the game was too expensive so I just watched other people play it. One of the guys at my arcade was really good so it was fun watching him.

[Keatah]

The game was too expensive, and it was just FMV. I could either play 3 hours of Missile Command or a minute of this.. So..

[zzip]

The game was too expensive, and it was just FMV. I could either play 3 hours of Missile Command or a minute of this.. So..

 

But in 1983 we had never seen an FMV videogame so it was novel..

 

I could play Missile Command at home for nothing, but I couldn't play anything like Dragon's Lair at home for at least a decade until CD-ROMs became commonplace.

[Cynicaster]

I love all kinds of arcade games from the late 70s up to the early-mid 90s, but I never got to play Dragon's Lair until I encountered it at a retro arcade a few years ago.

 

I spent a while trying to play it but I thought it was terrible. If you play the game as I did with no nostalgic link, outside of its historical context, and if you refuse to grant it the apologist "leeway" that tends to go along with that, I think you can almost say that Dragon's Lair is an objectively terrible game. Heck, whether or not it's even a game is debatable.

[Inky]

For anyone interested, here's the episode of Pie Factory where Dauber and I review Dragon's Lair...

http://www.fab4it.com/piefactory/audio/PFP_Episode014.mp3

[zzip]

I love all kinds of arcade games from the late 70s up to the early-mid 90s, but I never got to play Dragon's Lair until I encountered it at a retro arcade a few years ago.

 

I spent a while trying to play it but I thought it was terrible. If you play the game as I did with no nostalgic link, outside of its historical context, and if you refuse to grant it the apologist "leeway" that tends to go along with that, I think you can almost say that Dragon's Lair is an objectively terrible game. Heck, whether or not it's even a game is debatable.

 

It's one of those games remembered more for technical achievement, but gameplay didn't age well. Kinda like the Uncharted series for me. I played the old ones and can't understand what the fuss was about, but in the context of the time of their release, I suppose they were groundbreaking.

 

Well Dragon's Lair was even more ground breaking than that.

 

Consider in 1983, the average arcade game was using either hollow vector graphics or 2D sprites powered by an 8-bit CPU. If the game talked at all, it was probably using a voice synthesizer that sounded like a Speak and Spell, Digital audio was still pretty rare.

 

Into this world drops a game that looks like Disney animation with "impossible graphics". Yeah we knew the gameplay was kinda weak with what today would be called "quicktime events". We had never seen a videogame like it up until then. It was still eye candy, it drew people to crowd around it.

 

EDIT: Also even back then the novelty didn't last. Soon after DL was a wave of Laserdisc games, but most of them didn't hold interest very long, and by 1995 the arcades were back to bit-mapped and vector games again

Edited September 22, 2017 by zzip

[Austin]

Dragon's Lair is definitely a "game". Specifically, it's entirely based around quick time events (QTE). It's probably one of the earliest forms of this, even. However, unless the hint system is active (i.e., areas highlight giving some kind of indication as to what and where you need to push), it's extremely difficult to get into and appreciate.

 

I only experienced it on the Sega CD back in the day and it was tough to enjoy. No real cues as to what you were supposed to do, and even when you knew what to do, the timing was odd and you would often still end up dead despite feeling like you played correctly. That said, a friend of mine recently acquired an original Dragon's Lair cab and it seems a lot more interesting there. Things were highlighted on his version and the gameplay was a lot more responsive.