There are two schools of thought on the 1980’s arcade ‘phenomenon’ that was Dragon’s Lair. The first claims that is was way ahead of its time and the second, slightly more vociferous in the SPOnG office, claims that the gameplay was unforgivably broken, thus ruining what promised to be something rather special.
For those who missed it Dragon’s Lair was one of the first laserdisc video games, released in June 1983 by Cinematronics, featuring highly polished Disney-like animation, allowing players to control a fully realised character in the form of Dirk the Daring... or at least promising that.
Dragon’s Lair was described as a “fantasy adventure where you become a valiant knight, on a quest to rescue the fair princess from the clutches of an evil dragon. You control the actions of a daring adventurer, finding his way through the castle of a dark wizard, who has enchanted it with treacherous monsters and obstacles. In the mysterious caverns below the castle, your odyssey continues against the awesome forces that oppose your efforts to reach the Dragon's Lair…”
Either way, whatever your take, it’s certainly intriguing to see Dragon’s Lair making its way to the Nintendo DS (screens pictured here)
The Nintendo DS version will feature dual-screen, book-style play or single-screen play with full touch-screen support in single-screen mode, voice recognition, rumble pak support and also include all the various arcade and home modes of the game to date.
It all sounds very promising. Although we cannot help but remember the time we nearly broke our hand by hitting a Dragon’s Lair arcade cabinet in utter dejected frustration. We hope this doesn’t happen again, because we can’t really afford another new DS…
More on Dragon’s Lair DS as we get it.
For those who missed it Dragon’s Lair was one of the first laserdisc video games, released in June 1983 by Cinematronics, featuring highly polished Disney-like animation, allowing players to control a fully realised character in the form of Dirk the Daring... or at least promising that.
Dragon’s Lair was described as a “fantasy adventure where you become a valiant knight, on a quest to rescue the fair princess from the clutches of an evil dragon. You control the actions of a daring adventurer, finding his way through the castle of a dark wizard, who has enchanted it with treacherous monsters and obstacles. In the mysterious caverns below the castle, your odyssey continues against the awesome forces that oppose your efforts to reach the Dragon's Lair…”
Either way, whatever your take, it’s certainly intriguing to see Dragon’s Lair making its way to the Nintendo DS (screens pictured here)
The Nintendo DS version will feature dual-screen, book-style play or single-screen play with full touch-screen support in single-screen mode, voice recognition, rumble pak support and also include all the various arcade and home modes of the game to date.
It all sounds very promising. Although we cannot help but remember the time we nearly broke our hand by hitting a Dragon’s Lair arcade cabinet in utter dejected frustration. We hope this doesn’t happen again, because we can’t really afford another new DS…
More on Dragon’s Lair DS as we get it.
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Comments
ajmetz 28 Jun 2007 10:55
1/1
So, hasn't Dragon's Lair always got sh*t reviews on just about every format its been released on? A landmark title, but more about watching pre-recorded animated clips, and pressing the right button to trigger the correct next clip, or else a horrible death sequence, if you press the wrong button? I know also in the early days, home conversions for cartridge based systems that couldn't run laserdisc footage, were dodgy platformers that also scored badly in the review stakes.
I like the idea of interactive movies - I have a Saturn with Riven, and D, and almost bought Torico/Lunacy on ebay at the weekend. I'd probably be interested in someday playing Dragon's Liar or Space Ace, just to see what it was like, but, I've never read a good review of it in my life. And by default will anticipate this version being crap, like all the others. Arguably, even if it's true to the original, it will suffer the same problems, good to watch, crap to play(?).
Maybe I'll buy a cheap CD-I in the near future, and form my own first hand opinion....
I like the idea of interactive movies - I have a Saturn with Riven, and D, and almost bought Torico/Lunacy on ebay at the weekend. I'd probably be interested in someday playing Dragon's Liar or Space Ace, just to see what it was like, but, I've never read a good review of it in my life. And by default will anticipate this version being crap, like all the others. Arguably, even if it's true to the original, it will suffer the same problems, good to watch, crap to play(?).
Maybe I'll buy a cheap CD-I in the near future, and form my own first hand opinion....