Dragon's Lair

I see that Don Bluth is credited with directing Dragon's Lair, but the person who actually came up with the idea for the game gets no credit here. The man who was really behind Dragon's Lair was Rick Dyer. In the 70s he created a prototype for a game which used hand drawn artwork and text on an adding machine ribbon (rather than animation and sound on a laser disk.) The user would hit certain keys to make choices, and the machine would automatically roll the ribbon to the next appropriate scene. It was Dyer who pitched the idea for Dragon's Lair to several animation companies, and it happened to be Don Bluth's company who agreed to animate the game. While Don Bluth's animation in Dragon's Lair is excellent, he doesn't deserve the credit for creating the game itself.

I am guessing I could never wrap my mind around the fact you simply guide Dirk the same way every time. You just hit the controller at the right time. Instead, I would usually get killed again and again, occasionally making it through a room. I was always able to get through that room with the wall that was closing up! Still, I enjoyed watching it and playing it. Going through the various rooms of the castle where they mention an evil wizard along with the dragon, but you never really see him. You have to find and rescue the princess in this castle and make it to the dreaded dragon's lair. I would later own the game on the Sega CD and it was so easy to win and it did not look nearly as good as the arcade game. If you ever have seen a Sega CD you know the look of the game, as any movie sequence looks as if it has a film over it. That game was also disappointing as it did not include two of the rooms featured in the arcade game. The rope swinging level with the fire ropes and the level with the circular disc that shoots downward. I am guessing the disc can only hold so much, or perhaps these two levels moved to fast or something? Not sure, but they were a couple of my favorites in the arcade so their omission made me sad. This game is a fond memory of my childhood so it still holds a special place for me. Want to get the WII version of the game as it not only has this one, but also has the sequel and Space Ace.

Disclaimers; I didn't play Dragon's Lair when it first came out (although I'm theoretically old enough to). Secondly, I'm judging this from the Interactive DVD version.

Yes, by the standards of the time, Dragon's Lair is pretty. I even remember seeing an Amiga conversion of Space Ace in the late 1980s and being incredibly impressed. But is Dragon's Lair a good game or not? By today's standards, absolutely not. So we should make allowances for when it came out right? Er, no. There are games like "Asteroids" that stand up incredibly well today because they're so playable. And then there are games like Dragon's Lair.

Although I never played it at the time, I imagine I'd have been as impressed as anyone else- if not more- by its beautiful graphics. But let's be honest; that's about all it has. Dragon's Lair's appeal was always style over substance. (It's no surprise that the Amiga conversion that so impressed me was lambasted for its lack of playability.)

Yes, the animation is quite nice (although I wouldn't describe it as outstanding). However, if Laserdisc/FMV games were so great, ask yourself why they never took off and dominated the market in the way that Bluth predicted they would? The answer is they generally have horrible playability, reliant on figuring out the correct (fixed) set of actions at the correct time, and generally being quite frustrating to play. Well, this sums up Dragon's Lair perfectly.

It's often not clear what to do, and getting past the scenes is more a question of figuring out (or guessing) what to do and memorising it. This is horribly frustrating.

There's no plot as such in Dragon's Lair, just a bunch of hazardous scenes in which our hero dies, dies and dies again. The animation clips are generally short and abrupt, almost too short to be even watchable. At least it doesn't have the incredibly bad acting of live action FMV games...

I salute Dragon's Lair for doing something technically innovative at the time, and as I said I can understand why people liked it back then. However as a game, it's bordering on unplayable, and I suspect that this was always the case. It's an insult to the truly classic video games to excuse Dragons Lair's shortcomings as a product of their time. They're not; they're a product of style over substance.

Dragon's Lair is, IMO, Don Bluth's greatest work. The forefather of all interactive cinematic games, Dragon's Lair was, in it's day, astounding. The animation is beautiful, and for the first time, the player was able to "control" a cartoon. Most people either love or hate the gameplay. Rote memorisation was the key to finishing this game and in effect, seeing the entire movie. Even I'll admit that the gameplay isn't all that exciting on it's own. But, it's the animation that made you want to keep playing, and made the game extremely addicting. The "save the princess from the Dragon" plot is pretty cliche, but as a game, it doesn't try to fill in the missing details. Everything else is left to the players' imaginations, and that is the key to the fascination many fans continue to have with Dragon's Lair. If you really want to experience the game, track down an original arcade machine or use an emulator. The home versions don't give it justice.

I have a three pack on DVD including Dragon's Lair, Dragon's Lair 2, and Space Ace. They play using your remote control. Same patterns and video as the originals - It was a great novelty to play through these again. Plus it was pretty hard too because I forgot all the patterns in the 20yrs since i beat the games originally. OK i need 10 lines of text apparently so. It is an interesting storyline Dirk the daring must rescue princess whatever from the evil dragon...um, in the 2nd iteration of the game Dirk the daring must rescue the princess again i think. Space ace must rescue someone from the evil Bork i think, oh well is this 10 lines?