1 - Dragon's Lair - Arcade, every console or appliance to ever feature a CD-ROM or DVD drive
When it made its arcade debut in 1983, Dragon's Lair was enough to floor anyone who saw it. Unlike the other games of the day, which featured vague, blocky shapes and colors that drifted slowly across their screens performing menial tasks, Dragon's Lair looked like a Saturday-morning cartoon. Created by Don Bluth and starring a badass (if clumsy) knight named Dirk the Daring, Dragon's Lair challenged players to fight their way through cartoon horrors and dodge deadly traps to save the barely clad Princess Daphne.
Everyone - everyone - wanted to play Dragon's Lair, right up until the point that they actually did. Once that happened, they found out that they'd just paid half a buck to watch a knight fall off cliffs over and over again. It turned out the actual game boiled down to waiting for something to flash onscreen, and then randomly jerking a joystick around and hoping to God that the choice of direction didn't end with Dirk somehow turning into a skeleton again. It didn't help that, thanks to the puny laserdisc technology that ran the game, there were long, disorienting fade-to-black pauses between every botched decision and the inevitable death animation.
Despite being nearly unplayable, Dragon's Lair was so popular that it went on to spawn two sequels, a spinoff (Space Ace), a short-lived TV show and countless home adaptations, including recent DVD and Blu-ray versions. It's also largely responsible for the regrettable "interactive movie" fad of the early-to-mid '90s, which frequently aped its hit-a-direction-on-cue "gameplay."
For all its faults, though, Dragon's Lair is beautifully animated and fun to watch, particularly if you're fortunate enough to watch it played by a master - or, better still, you own one of the many editions of the game that can play itself and spare you the headache.
1 - Dragon's Lair - Arcade, every console or appliance to ever feature a CD-ROM or DVD drive
When it made its arcade debut in 1983, Dragon's Lair was enough to floor anyone who saw it. Unlike the other games of the day, which featured vague, blocky shapes and colors that drifted slowly across their screens performing menial tasks, Dragon's Lair looked like a Saturday-morning cartoon. Created by Don Bluth and starring a badass (if clumsy) knight named Dirk the Daring, Dragon's Lair challenged players to fight their way through cartoon horrors and dodge deadly traps to save the barely clad Princess Daphne.
Everyone - everyone - wanted to play Dragon's Lair, right up until the point that they actually did. Once that happened, they found out that they'd just paid half a buck to watch a knight fall off cliffs over and over again. It turned out the actual game boiled down to waiting for something to flash onscreen, and then randomly jerking a joystick around and hoping to God that the choice of direction didn't end with Dirk somehow turning into a skeleton again. It didn't help that, thanks to the puny laserdisc technology that ran the game, there were long, disorienting fade-to-black pauses between every botched decision and the inevitable death animation.
Despite being nearly unplayable, Dragon's Lair was so popular that it went on to spawn two sequels, a spinoff (Space Ace), a short-lived TV show and countless home adaptations, including recent DVD and Blu-ray versions. It's also largely responsible for the regrettable "interactive movie" fad of the early-to-mid '90s, which frequently aped its hit-a-direction-on-cue "gameplay."
For all its faults, though, Dragon's Lair is beautifully animated and fun to watch, particularly if you're fortunate enough to watch it played by a master - or, better still, you own one of the many editions of the game that can play itself and spare you the headache.
