Dragon's Lair - An Animated Video Game
November 19, 2015 4:19 PM   Subscribe

In the 80s, an arcade game called Dragon's Lair was released (previous). It was done in full hand-drawn animation at a time when most games looked like this. The animation was done by Don Bluth (who would later become known through movies like Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, All Dogs Go To Heaven and Anastasia.) The story of the game concerned Dirk the Daring's efforts to rescue the sleazily-dressed Princess Daphne from a dragon in an enchanted fortress. While the technology offered a limited number of options for how to play, there were plenty of ways to die. Otherwise, the game was basically a short cartoon series with each episode triggered by in-game actions. A successfully played game looked something like this.

A sequel was made in the early 90s where Dirk must rescue Daphne (now his wife) once again, this time from an evil wizard who is leading him on adventures through time. A full game looked like this, and once again, there were death scenes.
posted by Peregrine Pickle (81 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite
 
I was just thinking about this game, never had enough quarters to get far back in the day.

Is there PC simulation/version somewhere?
posted by msalt at 4:22 PM on November 19, 2015


*steps on disc*

OOOOOOOOOOOOOH

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
posted by delfin at 4:25 PM on November 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


Want me to get past this part for you? Do you? I will. I'll do it. I know how.

Ah, man. This joystick is broken.
posted by Kafkaesque at 4:27 PM on November 19, 2015 [28 favorites]


I swear, this game was some kind of object lesson to '80s kids like myself about the value of money and the fleeting nature of experience. Beautiful art and mesmerizing production, yet somehow an even more cynical rip-off than games literally asking you to pay for auto-decreasing health (WIZARD NEEDS FOOD, BADLY!).

Also, the ending is ... uncomfortable, to say the least. I'm sorta glad I never saw anyone reach it while actually of kid-in-an-arcade age.
posted by tocts at 4:31 PM on November 19, 2015 [30 favorites]


Is there PC simulation/version somewhere?

Digital Leisure has Dragon's Lair, DL2 and Space Ace on Steam, as well as on DVD. The DVDs are compatible with the DAPHNE emulator for various platforms, which also plays many other laserdisc games (Cliff Hanger being the most notable, using footage from Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro and Lupin III: Mystery of Mamo) if you can track down their ROMs and files.
posted by delfin at 4:32 PM on November 19, 2015 [9 favorites]


Watched the play-through video and wasn't sure if I'd be able to tell when I'd get to the part I could never get past no matter how many times I tried, because a few clips were part of the game's looping preview when it wasn't being played: I saw a lot of stuff I never actually played through. Still can't say for sure, but I can ballpark it because the opening 5-8 minutes of that game are burned into my muscle memory for all time: At some point during the playback, my hands stopped twitching because they hadn't performed the required motions one or three hundred times.
posted by mph at 4:33 PM on November 19, 2015 [5 favorites]


I could never deal with this game. Maybe my ADD or whatever, but I fed my quarters into Firefox instead...
posted by mikelieman at 4:36 PM on November 19, 2015 [3 favorites]


I remember Commodore 64 Dragon's Lair being really uninspiringly bad.

The Angry Video Game Nerd tries to play Dragon's Lair for NES

Also, slowbeef and Diabeetus of Retsupurae watched playthroughs of spiritual successors Time Gal and Ninja Hayate
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:37 PM on November 19, 2015


Just watch it on YouTube stopping to rewind every few seconds and setting fire to a dollar each time.
posted by Artw at 4:40 PM on November 19, 2015 [52 favorites]


I remember this game from the arcade in the Fox Hills Mall!

Or, anyway, I remember expiring in a variety of unpleasant ways. Never was all that good at video games, except maybe Caterpillar.
posted by thomas j wise at 4:42 PM on November 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


Jesus, that Daphne is worse than Elinore from Wizards. She makes Princess Peach look like Hillary Clinton.

Still, I wish I'd had a chance to play this as a little girl. I had a fear of arcades when this came out (due to early exposure to Chuck E. Cheese's) and by the time I wasn't afraid anymore, this was out of style.
posted by Countess Elena at 4:45 PM on November 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


This is the version I remember.
posted by synecdoche at 4:45 PM on November 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


Wow there are sequences straight up recycled. That would be infuriating after you've already burned 30 dollars on the game to get to that point.
posted by Karaage at 4:47 PM on November 19, 2015 [3 favorites]


Otherwise, the game was basically a short cartoon series with each episode triggered by in-game actions.

You just reversed what always felt like one of the great failures of my childhood and adolescence. Dragon's Lair was so, so appealing. It looked different from every other video game. It looked more fun! More exciting! More more more! There was always a line for it, and it cost quite a bit more than the other games if I remember correctly. But playing it was always, for me, an exercise in outright defeat -- but by the game itself, not any of the enemies in it.

I couldn't figure out how to actually play it. You'd insert your coinage and start moving the joystick around, but Dirk's movements wouldn't correspond with the motions of the joystick. For me, I'd get frustrated and start moving the joystick more maniacally, but NOTHING would happen. I'd then get frustrated and just glare at the machine and would die within something like 15 seconds, never having done any actual thing in the game. (And be out a bunch of quarters.)

In addition to being hugely disappointing, it was embarrassing, too. As I said -- there was a line. So this performance, it was observed by a bunch of older boys waiting to play after me, and I'd slink away feeling like (or at least feeling like they were thinking) I was just a dumb girl who didn't know how to play video games.

This post makes me realize that I was probably trying to control a cartoon with the joystick, and I wasn't as horrible at the game as I always thought I was. I mean, yeah, trying to play a cartoon with a joystick isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of my gaming skills, but at least it wasn't just that I was really, really bad at the actual game part.

So, thanks for the validation! I'm going to end today having erased a long-ago failure from the chalkboard of my life.
posted by mudpuppie at 4:54 PM on November 19, 2015 [39 favorites]


Yeah, that guy at Aladdin's Castle in the vinyl jacket? That was me. You might have missed me because the crowd watching was so thick. No, I totally didn't memorize all the moves from a magazine, dude! Whatever, I'm off to play some Gyruss...
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 4:55 PM on November 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


Wow, I posted an FPP about this 7 years ago! It linked to some videos someone posted with all the uncut scenes from the DVD that came inside the upright console. I loved this game but never got to the end. Thanks for bringing it back up to the surface!
posted by not_on_display at 4:55 PM on November 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


Karaage: "That would be infuriating after you've already burned 30 dollars on the game to get to that point."

A WINNER IS YOU!!!
posted by boo_radley at 4:56 PM on November 19, 2015 [3 favorites]


His limited dialogue (mostly "WOH!" and "ARGH!") sounds like he's Homer Simpson.

Actually, I'm just going to go ahead and decide that Dirk the Daring literally is Homer Simpson in his youth. :)
posted by anonymisc at 5:00 PM on November 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


I could never deal with this game. Maybe my ADD or whatever, but I fed my quarters into Firefox instead...

I'm so glad web browsers are no longer coin-operated.
posted by radwolf76 at 5:02 PM on November 19, 2015 [12 favorites]


AnecdoteFilter: When I was a teen, I worked summers at my dad's video production company doing skilled tasks such as carrying sandbags, carrying stands, moving desks, moving chairs, cleaning tables, lifting random shit, moving hot lights, driving the van(?), running the teleprompter, and oddly enough making thousands of perfectly spelled Chyron name supers/builds/crawls/scrolls.

So we finish up a three day punishing shoot where I'm wickedly underpaid, and the cast and crew go to a local pizza joint and there's a Dragon's Lair machine. I'm talking with the weird audio/IT/electrical guy and he notices me look at the machine. "I heard this is easy, wanna give it a shot?" "No, go ahead." He dies like two minutes in, hmphs, and plugs in another quarter. I'll never, ever forget this. He says, "Oh, I see." and still dies four or five more times, but he fucking crushed that machine for less than two bucks. And I got to drink half of his pitcher of beer.

Roy, if you're still out there, I owe you a shitty, warm, half pitcher of Hamm's.
posted by Sphinx at 5:06 PM on November 19, 2015 [11 favorites]


This post makes me realize that I was probably trying to control a cartoon with the joystick, and I wasn't as horrible at the game as I always thought I was.

Heh, you got further into it than I had the nerve to. But yeah, looking at the video, it seems like the game is actually Dance Dance Revolution... with a joystick... with narrow timing windows... and no rhythm... and instant death... and a cartoon to distract you from noticing the cues.

It looks to me like the way you play the game is to not watch the cartoon, so I guess the winning move was to be watching someone else play it. That way at least you can enjoy the art :)
posted by anonymisc at 5:08 PM on November 19, 2015 [3 favorites]


It's the original QTE. Burn it with fire.
posted by Artw at 5:10 PM on November 19, 2015 [5 favorites]


There is a long-gestating documentary about the game with a teaser and not much else.
posted by HeroZero at 5:12 PM on November 19, 2015


I was a little young for Dragon's Lair, but was the perfect age for maximum allowance wastage on Sega's Time Traveler, which replaced the Don Bluth animations with holograms of actors in shitty costumes.
posted by HeroZero at 5:16 PM on November 19, 2015 [8 favorites]


HeroZero: "I was a little young for Dragon's Lair, but was the perfect age for maximum allowance wastage on Sega's Time Traveler, which replaced the Don Bluth animations with holograms of actors in shitty costumes."

Oh man, i remember that game from the bowling alley my parents went to. I never once saw anyone get past the first screen.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 5:22 PM on November 19, 2015


I like that the premise of Time traveler was "Travel through time and shoot people randomly."
posted by Karaage at 5:29 PM on November 19, 2015 [6 favorites]


Dragon's Lair has been ported to practically everything with a screen, but my favorite is the version for the Game Boy Color. Most ports to weaker systems were action games based on the environments in the original, but the GBC port made an admirable attempt to replicate the original game, animation and all, on an 8-bit handheld.
posted by skymt at 6:01 PM on November 19, 2015 [10 favorites]


I remember reading that one of the developers claimed to be able to play it straight through from just the audio queues. Just that, never really played it but it did seem visually great.
posted by sammyo at 6:12 PM on November 19, 2015


Maybe my ADD or whatever, but I fed my quarters into Firefox instead...

Me too, but Dragon's Lair had a hard time competing against the incredible dual Firefox/M.A.C.H. 3 laserdisc game setup at the old arcade in the (now closed) Parkway Center Mall just outside Pittsburgh in the early-mid 80s.

IIRC, it consisted of about a 10 feet high wall with 6-8 screens, and an enormous three sided control console covered in lights and buttons around a central cockpit and customized, full-size joystick. It was beautiful, and made every other game in the arcade look about as fun as a Mattel Handheld Football game you've already played for 12 hours on a road trip and are completely sick of. My size estimates may be off slightly due to me being a little kid at the time, but the size of it still dwarfed my older brother who was a dozen years older than I.

With my older brother studying aeronautics, and Firefox being one of my favorite films at the time, it was easy to get him to take me over there and try to spend all my money on it on a lazy afternoon. I would have spent all I had, if not for the constant line of at least half a dozen people or more waiting to play as well, and you had to sign up on a list you secure your turn. The rest of the games seemed to be there just to pass the time while you waited.

The challenge of it was not so much about the highest score, but how long you could survive and how far you could get. For the most part, people had no problem waiting a while because just watching a good player was fun in itself, and you just might learn a trick or two that would help you when it was your turn.

I wish I could find pictures of it, because that thing was awesome.
posted by chambers at 6:20 PM on November 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


He says, "Oh, I see." and still dies four or five more times, but he fucking crushed that machine for less than two bucks.

And see, what was always unbelievable to me about Dragon's Lair was that not only was it so easy to lose, at least in my area it was expensive. I swear to god, even at a time when a standard play on any coin-op machine was still $0.25, the arcades in my area had Dragon's Lair on $1.00 a play. It was absolutely nuts.

(Consequently, I played it maybe three times in my life, and felt like I'd wasted all my arcade money every time. Then I watched other people lose their money, and felt slightly better about myself.)
posted by tocts at 6:21 PM on November 19, 2015


WIZARD NEEDS FOOD, BADLY!

Obligatory
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:26 PM on November 19, 2015


For me, I'd get frustrated and start moving the joystick more maniacally, but NOTHING would happen.

No, see, you've got to wait until you see a flash--there, press right! No! No, hold on--ohhh. Can I play now?

(at which point i would sulk and go play Robotron 2084 because it had TWO joysticks and they both did stuff!)
posted by mittens at 6:29 PM on November 19, 2015 [6 favorites]


There's an entire FPP's worth of history regarding the advent (and subsequent downfall) of videodisc-based games. Paging JHarris....
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:32 PM on November 19, 2015


Dragon's Lair almost seems like Rock Band or Dance Dance Revolution. I bet you could memorize the timing and direction and then do it with your eyes closed.
I think I played it once or twice before giving up. I was too young to figure it out.
posted by hot_monster at 6:40 PM on November 19, 2015


I mean, this, and this and this were the games I'd been playing. Then Dragon's Lair comes along? Of course that's where your money's going!

(Then it crushes you, and you slink back to that sit-inside Star Wars game that smells like b.o. and pizza farts.)
posted by mudpuppie at 6:57 PM on November 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


The Amiga version came on around 500 floppy disks and was about as much fun as that sounds.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:01 PM on November 19, 2015 [10 favorites]


I wish I could find pictures of it, because that thing was awesome.

Must have been a custom set-up, since these games were by competing companies (Gottlieb and Atari). This is the cabinet I remember seeing M.A.C.H. 3 in.

There's an entire FPP's worth of history regarding the advent (and subsequent downfall) of videodisc-based games. Paging JHarris....

We scratched the surface in this 2009 AskMe.
posted by ryanshepard at 7:13 PM on November 19, 2015


The Amiga version came on around 500 floppy disks and was about as much fun as that sounds.


As pointed out to me on Twitter recently, Another World was basically Dragons Lair but actually a game.
posted by Artw at 7:15 PM on November 19, 2015 [8 favorites]


Not just a game, but seriously one of the best games.

I replay Another World every few years, and it never gets old.
posted by tocts at 7:18 PM on November 19, 2015


And see, what was always unbelievable to me about Dragon's Lair was that not only was it so easy to lose, at least in my area it was expensive

That's because laser disc games were 2-3 times as expensive as "standard" arcade cabinets. According to this NYT article from 1983, a standard Dragon's Lair cabinet cost $4,000 each (that's about $9500 adjusted for inflation) brand new.

From the article:
''We've had 7,300 purchase orders from arcades and distributors on 'Dragon's Lair' since July 1,' '' Mr. Bluth said. ''At $4,000 a game, that's more than $29 million already.
Note: the article is dated August 2nd, so that's what they made in less than 32 days.
posted by chambers at 7:19 PM on November 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


You guys know he's trying to make a movie out of this now?
posted by overeducated_alligator at 7:24 PM on November 19, 2015


Never spent a quarter on it but that was a pretty decent cartoon.
posted by fraxil at 7:26 PM on November 19, 2015


overeducated_alligator: I actually ended up looking into the game and writing the post after accidentally stumbling on the Kickstarter for the film (I didn't link it because Metafilter has a policy about not linking to any active fundraisers.) I think there's 6 days left on the Kickstarter... but I can't imagine a particularly good movie would come out of this? I mean, you'd have to really revise the "personlities" of the characters to make them tolerable for a film-length project, which seems like cheating -- or else, it would have to be a comedy about these two utter ditzes. (Young Homer Simpson as someone in the thread above said, and I don't get a sense that Daphne's even as smart as "Goodnight" Gracie Allen.)
posted by Peregrine Pickle at 7:45 PM on November 19, 2015


And of course there was the Saturday morning cartoon which asked you to guess what Dirk would do before each commercial break...
posted by jozxyqk at 7:59 PM on November 19, 2015


I remember distinctly that Dragon's Lair looked really appealing at first glance, but the lack of responsiveness was very frustrating. The laserdisc format translated into gameplay that was only responsive at certain moments during cutscenes, so it didn't feel immersive at all, more like watching a movie which required occasional feedback. That, plus the $1 per play cost made it a game I avoided. The game's popularity helped clear out the lines for other games I liked, but by that point I was kinda outgrowing the arcade.
posted by krinklyfig at 8:47 PM on November 19, 2015


I highly recommend this piece on the author's experience of mastering Dragon's Lair. Really good.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 9:11 PM on November 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


verrry tangential but within scope considering the dataspace of manually-animated video games.
posted by mwhybark at 9:59 PM on November 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


Here it is running on a Sinclair ZX81 with 2 colours and 1KB memory. It's the arcade original too, not a rewrite.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 10:53 PM on November 19, 2015 [3 favorites]


The animation reminds me of D&D drawings from way back in the day.
posted by persona au gratin at 12:03 AM on November 20, 2015


Klayman, I think you broked the lake....
posted by retronic at 12:27 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


(at which point i would sulk and go play Robotron 2084 because it had TWO joysticks and they both did stuff!)

Xybots had a single joystick, but it twisted left and right to turn your body.
posted by mikelieman at 12:50 AM on November 20, 2015


This certainly never came to the UK rural backwater I was living in but I do remember seeing on a documentary or news item or something... may be one of the London arcades? I remember someone complaining about hard and expensive it was. State of the art for me was Phoenix so this seemed like magic / pure cyberpunk.

Watching it now, not so much, but those sound effects and musical stings that were on every imported American cartoon were very very proustian
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:28 AM on November 20, 2015


Wow! I had totally forgotten about this, thanks for the post.

Hardest. Game. Ever.
posted by zardoz at 4:45 AM on November 20, 2015


hot_monster, you almost could memorize the moves, but not quite. IIRC there were two places in the game, the Knight with lightning powers and the giant trough with boulders rolling up and down, where they tossed in some random numbers and a couple of different animations so the game wasn't totally an exercise in muscle memory.

And, dont forget Space Ace, also by Bluth, with the not quite as sleazily dressed as Daphne but still sleazily dressed Kimberly.

I think I also remember Cliffhanger, or at least looking at the list of laserdisc games I think it was cliffhanger. What I mostly remember was that the death sequence always ended with your corpse being hanged.
posted by sotonohito at 4:55 AM on November 20, 2015


I also have dim memories of Freedom Fighter, a laser disc that used footage from the Leiji Matsumoto anime Galaxy Express 999. I died a lot in that one, too.

And Cobra Command, though I usually could at least beat the introductory New York level. If memory serves me correctly, part off the trick was ignoring the vocal cues of the copilot when flying between skyscrapers -- one had to move the joystick in accordance with the visual prompt, but the vocal command to go right or left would be out of synch with the directional arrows on the heads-up display (doubtless on purpose). If one moved the joystick to the left when told, and the arrow on screen was still pointing right, well, cue helicopter crash animation
posted by Gelatin at 5:50 AM on November 20, 2015


This game came at a time when most people didn't really understand how computers and video games worked. I remember it was hyped on the news for weeks before it showed up at the arcade. We saw the amazing graphics and just assumed we would be able to control Dirk the same way we controlled the little spaceship in Asteroids. If you moved right, he'd walk right. Forward, he'd walk forward. That's how video games worked, didn't they?

Nope. The cartoon is fixed, because that's how cartoons worked in the 1980s. If you pushed the joystick a certain way, Dirk wouldn't necessarily go that way. All it would do was trigger whatever cartoon clip was triggered by that direction. It wasn't a video game at all, it was a bunch of cartoon clips.

Nothing logical at all about it. It was just a big waste of time. As long as you knew the right sequence for each scene you could get past it, otherwise it was impossible.

I spent a good amount of time installing DAPHNE and "acquiring" the videos for this game. It took me a lot more time setting it up on my MAME cabinet than I ever spent actually playing it. After all that effort I verified that it worked and then I never, ever played it. I hate this game. All it does is bring back memories of being fooled by hype.

And I still get fooled by hype. I'll never learn.
posted by bondcliff at 6:07 AM on November 20, 2015 [6 favorites]


The animation reminds me of D&D drawings from way back in the day.

Funny thing is, it took me a long time to realize that if anything, the protagonist (the player stand-in, supposedly the good guy) looks an awful lot like super-dick extraordinaire Sir Kay, from Disney's 1963 Sword in the Stone.
posted by tocts at 6:22 AM on November 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


I also remember this game all too well, for reasons other mefites have expressed here. Probably the most popular and difficult "game" at Diamond Jim's in Columbus, Georgia. Having never seen anyone make it past the first 2 or three minutes, I just watched the entire thing to its softcore, Freudian conclusion and was underwhelmed, to say the least. And on the plausibility tip it's, like, damn, man, why did the dragon need his lair to have such a complicated floor plan anyway? I mean, what's that about? The architect must have been either a certified genius or an authentic wacko...
posted by Bob Regular at 6:29 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


There's an entire FPP's worth of history regarding the advent (and subsequent downfall) of videodisc-based games.

The biggest problem with them? They had a videodisc player. A mechanical videodisc player.

In careful home use, these weren't the most robust of machines. In an arcade? They were basically doomed. Arcade games makers spent a bunch of time trying to come up with robust joysticks and such (they got the buttons from pinball machines) but seriously, the most common thing you'd see on these after a month in the arcade was "OUT OF ORDER."

One of the reasons arcades and such got away from pinball was also that they were also mechanical, and thus, broke all the time, but at least all the mechanisms in a pinball machine were built to work in a less-than-gentle environment. That laserdisc player in the videodisc games didn't have a hope in Hell.
posted by eriko at 6:58 AM on November 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


There's an iOS version of Dragon's Lair that looks pretty faithful to the original (in that it's a cartoon and it's goddamn impossible). I recall it being 50 cents whenever the machine was working, but it was almost never working.
posted by Ham Snadwich at 7:06 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


And I still get fooled by hype. I'll never learn.

Ha, you really should know by now, bondcliff, honestly. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to buy a new computer in anticipation of how great No Man's Sky is going to be.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 7:36 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


Ha, you really should know by now, bondcliff, honestly. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to buy a new computer in anticipation of how great No Man's Sky is going to be.

Sorry, I'm waiting in line for the new Star Wars movie made by the guy who apparently ruined Star Trek forever*.

*Or so I've heard. I have never really watched Star Trek so I have no opinion on whether or not those movies were bad or good.
posted by bondcliff at 7:40 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


We had that Time Traveler game at my arcade and it was like $0.75 to play. I’d play it at least once every time I went to the mall, probably throwing in another quarter or two for more time reversal cubes, and I got really far into it once, and all of a sudden my game just… ended.

Reading that article now, it looks like I encountered the “Hellgate” minigame that has a small chance of ending your game entirely. I didn’t even realize that it was something you could choose not to do. But, man, what an evil thing to do. A video game maker can’t cause actual physical harm to kids, but they were really pushing the bounds of their harm ambit there.

At least Dragon’s Lair doesn’t fuck you over like that. I don’t think I played Time Traveler anymore after that happened.
posted by savetheclocktower at 9:17 AM on November 20, 2015


this game was some kind of object lesson to '80s kids like myself about the value of money and the fleeting nature of experience. Beautiful art and mesmerizing production, yet somehow an even more cynical rip-off

I remember watching everyone else play the game, but I never put a quarter in myself. Once I got over the initial fascination (and fear that I was not good enough to play the game), I realized what a poor experience the gameplay was - really, just move the joystick at the right time - and I hung around so I could see the art and the story, without ever having to pay a cent.

Prepped me for being an internet consumer, I guess :)
posted by nubs at 9:22 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


I have the iOS version that's pretty faithful to the original, and also have it for my xbox 360, for when friends' kids come over. I still love this game, but what I love more is watching the kids' faces light up, then scowl in frustration as they die, then their little jaws set in grim determination to beat the game.

This is probably why I never get asked to babysit.
posted by culfinglin at 9:40 AM on November 20, 2015


The thing that sucks about the game is that you don't really control the movement, you just push a button when it tells you to.
posted by Ham Snadwich at 9:57 AM on November 20, 2015


Relatedly, Dragon’s Lair foretold the 90s-era FMV games — glorified branching movies with some shallow gameplay on top. For a while I was scared that this would actually be the future of games.

In the arcade there was Mad Dog McCree, which involved saloon shoot-outs interspersed with quick-draw style mini-games. In the home market there were games like Night Trap, in which you control a house's security system and switch between various cameras to try to “trap” enemies that were basically just dressed in trash bags and skulking around the house.

Even the classic Myst is technically an FMV game, though it has aged better than the others, mainly by taking place in computer-rendered scenes and having as few human actors as possible.
posted by savetheclocktower at 11:01 AM on November 20, 2015


Anyone who loved Another World should check out Flashback: The Quest For Identity which was put out by the same publisher. It isn't quite as cinematic but has similar gameplay mechanics and a more expansive world.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:47 AM on November 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


Just thinking about Myst. I gave a talk last week at a really interesting old resort in New York state, the Mohonk Mountain House, (where "house" = a massive structure that looks like the castle of a mad Bavarian prince).

It was all hard granite with intriguing hand-built wood structures and walkways built into it, and I immediately wondered if the designers of Myst based that world on it.
posted by msalt at 11:55 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


Yeah I remember seeing the kickstarter for a Dragon's Lair movie and thought how silly of an idea that seemed. No one has nostalgia for the Dragon's Lair characters. They were terrible
All we have nostalgia for is the mystique of being in the arcade with zero or a few quarters, exposed to this marvelous new machine that was unlike anything else.

If you go to Funspot in New Hampshire, they have Dragon's Lair and Space Ace and Cliff Hanger laserdisc games available for play.
Also in NH, Pinball Wizard Arcade has Dragon's Lair II.

As for me, I'll watch a quick youtube of them, and move on to the bank of vector games.
posted by Theta States at 12:29 PM on November 20, 2015


The one thing that I remember about Dragon's Lair was that it was the first time I ever saw a TV (that's right, an actual television) sitting on top of an arcade cabinet, showing the live gameplay for the crowd of people/kids who had crowded into the Chuck E Cheese that day.
posted by Wild_Eep at 1:20 PM on November 20, 2015


Also, the ending is ... uncomfortable, to say the least. I'm sorta glad I never saw anyone reach it while actually of kid-in-an-arcade age.

Yeah, it turned from 1970s Walt Disney to 1970s Ralph Bakshi mighty fast.
posted by jonp72 at 1:25 PM on November 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


Does anybody remember a later (90s, probably) game in this style called Brain Dead 13? That sure looked cool as a kid but it was damn near unplayable, giving almost no clue what action you should take or when.
posted by atoxyl at 1:37 PM on November 20, 2015


A Space Ace playthrough
posted by nubs at 2:18 PM on November 20, 2015


Yeah, it turned from 1970s Walt Disney to 1970s Ralph Bakshi mighty fast.

That's called "rewarding the successful player"...
posted by mikelieman at 2:48 PM on November 20, 2015


Portscenter talks about the Gameboy Color port of Dragon's Lair
posted by gc at 10:20 PM on November 20, 2015


Anyone who loved Another World should check out Flashback: The Quest For Identity which was put out by the same publisher.

Oh man, I've been trying to remember the name of those two games for a while now. Thanks!
posted by Ham Snadwich at 1:37 PM on November 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


A Space Ace playthrough

Man, the world of that game is a real head-trip. It is what HP Lovecraft would call "non-Euclidean."
posted by grumpybear69 at 1:45 PM on November 23, 2015


Flashback is indeed amazing, though I haven't re-played it recently. Is there a particular platform it's good on these days, aside from just getting it on GOG? (I think the Genesis version is the one most burned into my memory -- is the PC version good?)
posted by tocts at 2:56 PM on November 23, 2015


That's called "rewarding the successful player"...

There's literally a Tropes vs Women video about this.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:24 PM on November 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


Also just found out that there are iOS ports of both Another World and Flashback.
posted by Ham Snadwich at 6:40 AM on November 24, 2015


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