| Dragon's Lair CD-Rom | ReadySoft Incorporated | 1993 | |
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A conversion of the 1983 Don Bluth coin op cartoon game. Players control Dirk the Daring as he struggles his way through a dungeon to fight Singe, the Dragon, and rescue the beautiful Princess Daphne. With limited movement allowed, the game's main emphasis is on its heart-stopping graphics. The 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. It was the first game to use a laser disc instead of programmable chips to store the game information. The laser disc could store vast amounts of detailed art. In the case of Dragon's Lair, this art was the beautiful handiwork of Don Bluth, a former Disney animator who left the company to start his own animation studio. His film work includes The Secret of N.I.M.H., An American Tale, and the upcoming Titan A.E. The game worked a lot like those old "Choose Your Own Adventure" books - in each room, you would have a number of obstacles to avoid, usually by simply moving the joystick in one direction or hitting the sword button. Of course, more complicated rooms, like the one occupied by the aforementioned electric knight, would require a whole series of moves. One miss-timed or missed move and you were dead. The basic set of rooms never changed (since they were all pre-animated, there wasn't any way to change them). Once you had memorized the room's pattern, getting through it alive was pretty much a sure thing. Early on in the game, the game would give you hints: doors would flash, a sound would chime, and if you were paying attention, you'd know where to go. But those hints stopped pretty early on. The only real way of learning in the game was by dying over and over again, and learning from your mistakes. But that wasn't always guaranteed, either. Sometimes, the rooms would flip on you -- same animation, but in mirror-image. A DVD version came out in 1997 and in 2001, a remastered Arcade Authentic version came out with MPEG-1 video, original scoring scheme, arcade circuitry control through software dip switches, multiple levels of difficulty and total scene authentication. In 2006, there was an HD (High Definition) version. | ||
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