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Classic Games (Games)

Dragon's Lair - A Forbidden Love Affair? 87

Posted by simoniker from the keep-it-quiet dept.
Thanks to WoS for its article exploring the low critical regard that laserdisc videogame Dragon's Lair is held in. The author argues that the game "is the most successful videogame in the history of the world that nobody will admit to liking. For over 20 years, Dragon's Lair games have been coining in cash hand-over-fist, while drawing nothing but bile from press and critics." He goes on to suggest: "Half-Life is almost as linear and pre-scripted as Dragon's Lair, and is just as happy to kill you instantly if you take a single step in the wrong direction", before concluding: "It's only the hardcore, the critics and the reviewers who tend to have it in for Lair and its ilk, and that may be because a game like Dragon's Lair renders both criticism and years of carefully-accumulated gaming expertise worthless."
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Dragon's Lair - A Forbidden Love Affair? More

Dragon's Lair - A Forbidden Love Affair?

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  • huh? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've always loved DL, ever since I was 13 and learning ot master this damn thing in the local Aladdin's Castle. I really felt like a big shot when I wowed the crowd with my "moves"...

    who actually will not admit to liking this game? I mean, fine, if you just don't like it... but to hide it? Don't get it...

  • NO! It sucked! (Score:5, Funny)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Thursday August 05, 2004 @04:24AM (#9886863) Journal
    It sucked quarters at the arcade, when I bought it for my Amiga, the Sega CD and on the PC!

    Nope, never did like the damn game, humm, I don't have the DVD yet.
    • Is there actually a decent version of it for home use? I'd like to see it and Space Ace, but the article makes it sound like there's no passable home version out there...

      • Re:NO! It sucked! (Score:3, Informative)

        by GoRK ( 10018 )
        Try Daphne [daphne-emu.com] with an arcade conroller of some sort and you'll get pretty much the real deal (minus the scoreboard) -- if you buy a real Dragon's Lair scoreboard, you can build an interface to have Daphne control it, though.
        • Incedentally, you can get the footage for DL for Daphne from the Dragons Lair DVD's that are out (man playing that on the DVD player has GOT to suck!) Instructions for ripping it so Daphne can use it are all over the place. Using the DL roms without a machine, though, is definately a grey area situation, though.

      • Re:NO! It sucked! (Score:3, Informative)

        by Jarlsberg ( 643324 )
        Sure there is. Dragon's Lair for the Amiga was spot on (and quite an achievement for its time as well). If you don't have an Amiga, get an emulator (Amiga Forever/WinUAE) -- a decent PC rig will give a smooth play experience.

        Btw, Dragon's Lair for the C64 was a completely different game. It was actually more playable than the arcade (but no fancy graphics).

        • Btw, Dragon's Lair for the C64 was a completely different game. It was actually more playable than the arcade (but no fancy graphics).

          Disagree there. The arcade version, being LaserDisc FMV, could at least give you clues in the animations so that you could make a logical move. Even if the move wasn't obvious before it was requires, you should have been able to determine the correct move from the death sequence.

          The C64 version did not have such clues because if the less advanced graphics. Sometimgs, yo

      • You might want to try the Dragon's Lair 20th Anniversary set produced by Digital Leisure [digitalleisure.com]. It basicaly uses the original laserdisc video of DL, DL2 and SA converted to MPEG format. It's pretty enjoyable, although I wasn't to pleased with my continual dying in DL2.
      • I had a PC version of Dagon's Lair I picked up around 1995 - seemed almost identical to the arcade one.
      • The DVD version on a DVD player with very fast menu functions (like most Apex players) is, aside from the lack of a joystick, supposed to be a very good conversion. The problem with the DVD version is that the menuing on most DVD players is ass-slow for no good reason and that makes the game essentially unplayable.

  • Technically superior at the time. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Domini ( 103836 ) on Thursday August 05, 2004 @04:33AM (#9886891) Journal
    It was way before games like "Out of this World", but lacked something to hook one for long.

    I loved the humour in the games though, but I think the game lacked gaming value(?). It wasn't bad, just not as good as others to play.

    Dunno... it was more like a demo I guess... you played it to be wowed by effects (which were cool at the time), but not fun to play. If someone else was playing, then great! ;)

    -mumble- -mumble-

    I had mixed feelings at the time, as well as now...
    • Absolutely right. I *never* liked playing this game, but I had a friend could beat it quite easily and it was always awesome to watch him work his magic. I personally never had the memory (or perhaps the timing) for it. But man, watching someone else beat that game is really pretty entertaining.

  • Deprived Fans.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by swdunlop ( 103066 ) <swdunlop AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday August 05, 2004 @04:39AM (#9886918) Homepage
    Yet another deprived fan, wishing his carefully memorized sequence of joystick twiddles were useful in modern games. Dragon's Lair was strictly a memory game, albeit one with slick graphics and a funny narrative.
    • MOST games are strictly memory games, platformers especially. Games that introduce a random element are typically less so, but games in general can be boiled down to a memorized sequence of joystick twiddles.
      • Perhaps, but in platformers there's almost endless ways of beating a level. Run then stop? Walk? Your call. In DL however you have one course of action. Or two or however many memorized sequences allow you to complete the game.

    • Forget memorization. The game would TELL you where to go if you followed the flashing lights! :)

  • DL was better as an arcade game (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Zawash ( 147532 ) on Thursday August 05, 2004 @04:49AM (#9886951)
    Dragon's Lair worked better as an arcade game. At the local games parlor, the few who knew how to beat the game (or at least get past the first few screens) were revered by the unwashed masses. The gameplay was nothing special, but the graphics were mindblowing. Hmm - I can remember the game being featured on a Beyond 2000 show, even..

    When it at last was released as a PC game, it was too short and too easy, when you no longer was limited by the amount of quarters in your pocket.

    The game could actually be replaced by a "guess the number" game, where you guess one single digit at a time, and have to restart from scratch when you miss a digit. You even get a nice cartoon if you guess correctly. The catch is that the number you're supposed to guess is the same every time you play..

  • It isn't a game (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AliasTheRoot ( 171859 ) on Thursday August 05, 2004 @04:57AM (#9886976)
    The reason people hate it is because it is frigging terrible. If Don Bluth had released a 30 minute cartoon of it, people would lambast it for being of lower than his usual standard and exceptionally badly written.

    Instead, they released a "game" where the gameplay mechanic was watch some turgid animation, then at the critical junction move a joystick or hit a button at the right time to continue playing the animation.

    Unfortunately, 9 times out of 10, the required direction or button wasn't clearly explained or worse still made no sense at all and then you got to watch the stupid death cartoon yet again.

    Most people prefer pacman because in that game up makes you go up and right makes you go right.

  • Dragons lair as linear as Half Life? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by johannesg ( 664142 ) on Thursday August 05, 2004 @04:59AM (#9886984)
    What a bunch of crap is that. In Half Life you at least have freedom to walk around as you want, look at the environment as you want, tackle problems in different ways, go back to earlier locations (you can go back to the big escalator from nearly halfway through the game!). And although the locations can only be visited in, effectively, on order, it gives a damn fine impression that you have absolute freedom.

    By comparison, Dragons Lair requires you to press a single button during a very short interval to choose between death and life. It is just a series of binary choices, with no hope of variation, ever. The beautiful graphics tend to wow people, but once you play the game you quickly realize it isn't a game at all.

    • regardless of that you have always only one way to advance(and what is this 'tackle problems in different ways'? where half-life gives you choices in how to advance? it mostly has no problems at all beyond scale the walls and find the exit to next room). it was heavily scripted to be straightforward with no strays from the main script. if you don't try anything different on the first time you play it through it may seem like you have choices... but in reality you don't(painfully obvious when you've played i
      • So you would argue that in terms of interactivity, Half Life is in the same league as Dragons Lair, then?
      • Show me how I can take Dragon's Lair, connect to the net, and proceed to randomly KILL KILL KILL^W^W^W^W deathmatch with my friends. Or write a mod for it to add new weapons or rules.

        Sorry, but in using Half-Life you only remembered 1/2 of what Half-Life is. And even in the single player game (and there are plenty of linearly scripted single player games) at least I don't have to twitch my hands in some repetitive illogical pattern every few seconds to survive. I can go about things in many different ways.
        • we were talking about the single player part, and certainly not about online extensions.

          * I can go about things in many different ways.*

          the last time I played through half-life was just mere months ago, care to explain in what part of the single player game you can "go about things in many different ways"??

          besides my comment was just a prod at the comment that said that half-life was a 'very free game', which it isn't if you've ever played any game that really gives you options on how to get from point a
          • besides my comment was just a prod at the comment that said that half-life was a 'very free game', which it isn't if you've ever played any game that really gives you options on how to get from point a to point b. in linearity and choice of options it is on the same level with dragons lair.

            If you want to compare Half-Life to Dragon's Lair, fine, let's go. Exactly 1/2 way through Half-Life, I have the choice of using half a dozen different weapons, going back XX number of rooms/areas/maps, continuing forw
            • if you think that having the ability to go BACKWARDS(to areas where nothing has changed, so you don't really have any need to go there) or wielding different weapons is CHOICE then you really haven't played any game that really gives you choice on how to advance.

              the only option you have to actually advance the game in any way would be to do the single one thing the script wants you to do(that would be pushing the button in dragons lair, or walking to the only possible next room in half-life).

              basically the
              • "f you think that having the ability to go BACKWARDS(to areas where nothing has changed, so you don't really have any need to go there) or wielding different weapons is CHOICE then you really haven't played any game that really gives you choice on how to advance. "

                Umm I deside which wepon to kill most mobs with. In HL I do need to follow the script but I can deside to do somethings difrent with out diening which is a level of choice Which is a hell of a lot better than up or die; left or die; a or die;..
              • There's a difference between "press THE button at THE exact moment" and "press some buttons to do what you wanted to at your own pace".
              • the only option you have to actually advance the game in any way would be to do the single one thing the script wants you to do

                I can't tell if you're trolling, or you really think there's some way to compare Half-Life with Dragon's Lair... especially since your only argument seems to be that they're both linear. Oh boy, hold me down, cause that's one argument that's amazingly stupid and short-sighted. Apparently your idea of a "similar concept in gameplay" applies to every game in the history of the gami
                • The real reason I loved Morrowind : You can kill literally any single (or almost any random group of about fifty) person (people) and still finish the game just fine. What other game can say that?
                  • It's true that you can kill anyone in Morrowind (including the "god" Vivec) but it's obviously false that you can kill absolutely anyone and still finish the game. Try killing Caius Cosades at the beginning, for example.

                    Rob
                    • But the only reason you need Caius is to work your way up to Vivec. You never have to even see him - level up for a while, kill Vivec, take the papers, and then find the Last Dwarf and get Wraithguard working. (The only thing I haven't figured a way around is killing Vivec & the last dwarf before wraithguard is functional.)
                • I keep mentioning morrowind because that's the last game that gaver over 60 hours of fresh gameplay time and _still_ had more to offer.

                  though why i'm mentioning it here is that you did have genuine choices on how to get some things from someone for example - hell you had some choices on if you even wanted those things from that person.

                  *shrug* does anyone read my comments to end? i'm not saying it's uncommon for there to be a direct linear plot in a game, or that a game would be bad because of that. only t
                  • *shrug* does anyone read my comments to end? i'm not saying it's uncommon for there to be a direct linear plot in a game, or that a game would be bad because of that. only thing i'm just saying is that half-life itself isn't the "oh so very goddamn free" experience the guy i replied to said it was("you can go back to beginning from halfway through the game omg it's so free how does anyone dare to compare it being so simplistic").

                    Dude I think everybody agrees with you in that regard - including, actually,
                    • *an impression of absolute freedom*

                      pretty bad one at that, it's just this one thing... if one has played any games the really give that(system shocks, ultimas, nethack, deus ex..) it's painfully obvious that half-life isn't that great at maintaining the illusion of choice.

                      for the first time you play dragons lair it's almost just as much free, just with quite a bit less of work to get to the only possible way of getting further.
          • Plot devices I have to activate in a certain way, yes, but ...

            1) I can walk into the room with the trigger from many sides in HL ... in DL not only do I have to walk in one door but I have to do so exactly the same way and at exactly the right point in time.

            2) When facing a monster in HL I can: ... avoid it stealthily and (with the exception of rare encounters) escape unscather. ... kill it quickly with a big bad weapon ... (if the encounter is scripted such) use something in the environment to damage it

      • Re:Dragons lair as linear as Half Life? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Thursday August 05, 2004 @12:55PM (#9890384) Homepage Journal

        Even though the plot line in half-life is heavily scripted, there are still hundreds of different ways to tackle most of the goals in the game. For instance, after you take care of the big gigantic alien in the round room and hop on the little train car (can you tell I never beat the game) and run through the tunnels dealing with tons of soldiers who want to kill you, you can play all kinds of cute tricks with the train like tossing a satchel charge on it and blowing it while it cruises past the soldiers. In other words the game is about as complex as you want it to be. Meanwhile dragon's lair has what, two paths through the game?

        Dragon's Lair sucks ass as a game. It's a group experience. You memorized the moves and you played it in an arcade to amaze and impress the people who couldn't finish it. At the end, everyone cheered, patted you on the back, shook your hand and shit like that.

        I got dragon's lair on DVD free from someone, or I wouldn't have it. I've never played it. Maybe someday I'll rip it and make a music video out of it or something. I was as impressed with it as anyone when I was a kid. Cliff Hanger, Space Ace, and uh that other one whose name I can never remember were all well in the same category. Frankly, even as a child I Was more impressed by the fact that it had a laserdisc player in it than anything else.

        • Dragon's Lair sucks ass as a game. It's a group experience. You memorized the moves and you played it in an arcade to amaze and impress the people who couldn't finish it. At the end, everyone cheered, patted you on the back, shook your hand and shit like that.

          Wow, that sounds a lot like one of the most popular arcade games of today. Can anyone else see the similarities between Dragon's Lair and Dance Dance Revolution (or any of those other rhythm games)?
  • Try playing Stuntman! One mistake, and you get to watch the loading screen for 20 seconds. A repetitive death animation or two wouldn't have hurt there ...
  • Anyone else notice that rather than trying to prove the worth of Dragon's Lair on its own merits he instead try to prove it by insulting every other game remotely "similar" to it?
  • Didn't like playing it too much... there were parts that I didn't instinctively know which way to hit the joystick or button. So, I just had to burn a quarter. "Space Ace"... now that game I loved... I think they took it up a notch with that one. Another game... which I never see mention of was "Cliffhanger".
    • Cliffhanger was interesting - I learned later that it actually was a Japanese anime film called Lupin (one of several films, I seem to remember... it was so long ago) that got converted into a game. I remember seeing the film at an (anime) party in the early 90s.

      I liked Space Ace better than Dragon's Lair myself (c'mon - the infanto ray that turns people into helpless babies - classic). Did some googling, and here's more info [atarihq.com] on Cliff Hanger (oh yeah, it was 2 words :)
    • The anime that Cliff Hanger was based off of is called "Castle of Cagliostro" here in the states. They butchered it up pretty much for the game. Oh, and the gameplay was pretty... uh... uninspired. "Push the button!" (wait 10 seconds).
      • Yeah, I remember now... the anime was called Lupin III. He was a master thief... in fact I think it's on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. I remember seeing some old anime about Lupin finding some lost city underground or something... that one was good.
      • I liked the part in the game where Ginsu^WGoemon sliced the helicopter up in the sewer system with his 'unbreakable' katana.

        ::Until I saw more Lupin III anime, Goemon was known as Ginsu to me for that scene in the game--refering to the knife set they hawked on late-nite TV years and years and years ago when the Cliffhanger game was out....

        PS: Cartoon Network is showing Lupin III TV series. It is funny to watch--sometimes riotously so. I like how it is anachronistic at times for comedic effect.

        PPS: Ye

  • I call BS (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dot Com Drew ( 210060 ) on Thursday August 05, 2004 @05:33AM (#9887084) Journal
    Looking at the first 11 comments I see every argument that I would want to make, but since I am drunk I figure that I should state my case anyway.

    The game was OK. It was more of a memorize/pattern match sequence than it was a true game.

    There was humor. I know I laughed when I saw a few of my death sequences, but beyond that I don't think it brought much to the table in terms of "gameplay".

    I liked it but I liked it for what it was. I don't claim that it was halflife. DL is so far from half life that a comparison is weak at best.

    You know what. In reading the article I think that the author is full of crap. What was written was nothing more than a fanatic trying to bolster more support for the game and or himself. I guess the job was well done because I am another person that clicked on a link.

    In summary: game ok for what it was; article lacked weight and read like a "look at me" type rant. Dont forget to notice the paypal link.

    -drew

    oh ya. mispellings and gramatical errors be damned.
  • it was beautiful, funny and ... bloody expensive to play. It was fun even watching other people play it.

    Ciao

  • Not all popular games are critically acclaimed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ambrosine10 ( 747895 ) on Thursday August 05, 2004 @06:14AM (#9887182)
    Look at the "Myst" series. Myst and Riven topped the charts for years (I think it was the best-selling game on CD-ROM since the format came out) and all it ever got were bashings in the (gamers') press by the critics.

  • It's a fun game (Score:4, Interesting)

    by FromWithin ( 627720 ) <mike AT fromwithin DOT com> on Thursday August 05, 2004 @06:16AM (#9887187) Homepage
    I never played it when it came out in the arcade. It was far too expensive, especially when you died after about 30 seconds. The way to get your money's worth is to practice it. You can't practice because it's too expensive. But there was a retro area at E3 this year, and there it was. I was stuck there for about half an hour playing it. It was great. I really enjoyed it. I'm sure it would be easy to get bored once you've been through it, but I didn't get anywhere near through it. Space Ace was there as well, but it wasn't as good. Dragon's Lair randomly chooses a section when you start it, giving at least some variation, but Space Ace is pretty much linear right the way through. Excellent character design on the both of them though.

  • I liked Dragon's Lair (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LordOfYourPants ( 145342 ) on Thursday August 05, 2004 @07:25AM (#9887352)
    I liked Dragon's Lair.. then I liked Dragon's Lair II (the level with the piano playing was fantastic).

    Nowadays, I like Dance Dance Revolution. All pretty much the same interface (except Dragon's Lair didn't have any moves where you had to hold the joystick/sword button down for a long period of time if I'm remembering right).

    The day someone can combine the fitness involved in DDR with a game that looks like Dragon's Lair, I'll be there too :)
    • Dance Dance Dragon's Lair Revolution

      You're right-- it's the same damn game. "Memorize sequence of arbitrary steps/directions and enter them on the pad/joystick at exactly the right moment.

      You could probably hook the dance pad right up to an old DL machine, and play the game that way. If there's a PC version of DL, I'll bet you could use a PC DDR pad with it out-of-the-box. Of course, the steps are farther apart, if my old amiga version was any guide. Not quite as active.
      • You can see such a beast yourself this weekend [dragons-lair-project.com], if you happen to be in San Jose [caextreme.com]...

        As for the posters who have said that you can just stream some video linked to a few keypress inputs, that's only true if you've never played it before. There's a definite 'feeling' to it that most of the home ports just don't capture. (And I never saw one that was free, though there were some demos and a couple of magazine coverdisks.)

        For those who know it well, you can play it just as it was in 1983 if you use the Daphn [daphne-emu.com]

        • Holy crap, somebody beat us to it! Ah well... I suppose the lesson is "no matter how dorky you you are, there's always someone dorkier."

          Kudos to the folks setting this up-- it may be pointless, awkward to play, and a pain to set up, but that hasn't stopped me from wasting thousands of hours on similar futile excercises in geekery in the past, either.
    • You didn't just...reveal the formula for the "next big gimmick game" in an publicly accessible online forum did you?

  • Knob (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Perseid ( 660451 )
    This guy is being a knob. I like Dragon's Lair. Sure, it wasn't an execptionally good game, but it was fun in it's simplicity and I don't blame him for singing it's praises. But does he have to shamelessly knock modern games, sometimes games that have little or nothing to do with DL to do so?

    Dragon's Lair is little more than Simon with a Don Bluth cartoon. Some people will like this, some people won't.

  • My thoughts... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 05, 2004 @07:50AM (#9887442)
    When I was a kid in the 80's and I saw Dragon's Lair, I was amazed at it and thought that more games coming out soon were going to look just as amazing. Boy was I wrong!

    Dragon's Lair looks great. It has an interesting story. The lead character is interesting. But in the gameplay department, it is SORELY LACKING.

    Draogn's Lair was designed to eat quarters, and eat them it does, faster than any other game on the planet probably. Move the joystick three times and you have to put in another quarter. It's amazing anyone continued to play.

    "Half-Life is almost as linear and pre-scripted as Dragon's Lair, and is just as happy to kill you instantly if you take a single step in the wrong direction"

    That is a load of crap. I can put a quarter into Dragon's Lair and be dead three times in less than 30 seconds, barely having even touched the stick.

    Half Life on the other hand, you can walk around for quite a while without encountering a monster, and when you do, you are very likely to kill it. And not only are you likely to kill it, but you are likely to actually MOVE THE STICK/MOUSE AROUND A BIT WHILE DOING SO.

    Half Life is very interactive, Dragon's Lair is not. As a game, Dragon's Lair's only success is that it does what it was designed to do, and that is to eat quarters, and look better than all the other games sitting around it so people gravitate towards it and put quarters in.
  • One thing I miss about Dragon's Lair outside of the arcade was the different "versions" of the game that made it more difficult to play. There were 2 or 3 newer revisions of the game that changed the difficulty by playing certain scenes "out of order." These scenes didn't follow what you knew about the scene, nor was the timing the same, so you'd have to rely on major experimenting to figure it out.

    For instance, the scene with the dropping platform. You'd normally get that scene after 3 (I think) other
  • The reason it's so popular is because it's really, really easy to port. You need large storage, the ability to stream video, the most basic of branching logic and a few inputs. That's about it. That's why, as the article points out, it's been ported to just about everything. And most of those versions are completely free. Manufacturers would include a copy as an incentive to buy the system and to show that you could even play games on it, so I don't know that most of the money that the game brought in was f

  • That was fun ... NOT (Score:4, Insightful)

    by baywulf ( 214371 ) on Thursday August 05, 2004 @11:07AM (#9889089)
    [insert coin]
    L R R Die
    [insert coin]
    L R L U D Die
    [insert coin]
    L R L U D R L Die

    I can't think of any other game that wasted quarters so fast.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday August 05, 2004 @11:20AM (#9889230)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Allow me to pick off a couple of points the article makes.

    1. Comparing it it DDR and Wario Ware. While these game's machanics, compared to DL are similar, the main difference is the changing and adjustible difficulty. Almost every DDR song has at least three step patterns, each with their own degree of dificulty, and even those can be adjusted even further with options like flipping the step directions and trying to play on both dance pads. WW also has three degrees of difficulty on each game, and as you
    • . Almost every DDR song has at least three step patterns, each with their own degree of dificulty,

      More importantly, if you miss a single step in DDR, you keep playing. You can RECOVER from errors. Dragon's Lair stops on your first mistake and waits for another $0.5 to restart from the beginning.
  • ...that anyone ever played more than 30 seconds of it before dying.

    Seriously. I considered myself something of a hard core coin-op gamer back-in-the-day, and just when I was getting bored with Ms. Pac Man and Galiga, along comes Dragons Lair, placed right in the middle of the place. I think, if I remember correctly, while every other machine in the place took $0.25, this thing took a full dollar. Well, look at the graphics...it's probably worth it.

    I dutifily lined up like everyone else to give it a go, an
  • Sega made a hologram game that had similar gameplay mechanics to Dragon's Lair. Meaning you watched a scene, and then pressed a button or a direction at the right time. Only instead of a cartoon, it was a projected "save me Obi-wan, you're my only hope" style hologram.

    Anyone remember what that game was called? It was pretty neat at the time.
    • It was called Hologram Time Traveler [inetdvd.com], apparently. Created by Rick Dyer, of Dragon's Lair and Space Ace fame (unsurprisingly). I remember seeing this one in California when I was younger. It cost a dollar to play, and the gameplay was very similar to DL. I did play it, and lived through a couple screens- unlike Dragon's Lair which I tried once and saw right through it (even as an 8 year old I hated being ripped off for a quarter). This must've been in '88 or '89.
      The play of Hologram Time Traveler (Could
  • http://www.yigle.com/java_games/reflex.shtml

    -m

  • It was the "potential".... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Looking back I think that the thing that made Dragon's Lair so inviting at the time (and still exciting to those of us who experienced it firsthand) was the potential it represented.

    All of us D&D nerds at the time had stormed the castle and destroyed the dragon a million times, but only in our imagination. Here's a game that showed it in greater detail than ever before, and *we* were in control.

    Yes, the gameplay and controls sucked, especially when compared to the masterpieces of simplicity that wer

  • could actually be played now on just a dvd player.. think about it-- you could go up/down/left/right +enter with a remote... channel choices could be the individual clips....
  • When I played DL and another similar game, Mad Dog McCree, my basic impressions of them were the same. These aren't games, just greed gone completely overboard! Basically all they were saying to you was "Opps! You didn't move fast enough, you lose your quarter for that." over and over.

    This quickly devolves into utter pointlessness for the player. Because it's like playing any multiplayer deathmatch game (quake3/counterstrike/etc) in a quarter fed machine would be at the arcade - a real loud invitation for
  • This game's success is undoubtedly due to Don Bluth, a visionary who has somehow managed to avoid falling into the "profit is all that matters" trap of so many other creative greats. I heard an interview with him once in which he claimed that what was missing from so many games was characters to care about or enemies to truly hate. It's infinitely more satisfying to kill a flea that's been annoying the hell out of you off for the last twenty minutes than to slaughter a whole army of demons with no personal

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