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 On 09/13/2014 at 02:54 PM by KnightDriver See More From This User » |
I watched a lot of videos on some games from 1983: arcade games Mario Bros, Spy Hunter, Crossbow, Star Wars The Arcade Game; PC games Ultima III (check out The Spoony One's review of it. It's fun.), and Troll's Tale; console games Quest for Quintana Roo on ColecoVision, Pitfall II on Atari 2600, and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin for Intellivision.
Some I had little interest in playing after watching the video - Ultima III; or they weren't available outside of an arcade - Crossbow; or I'd played them - Pitfall II, or the ports really didn't capture the feeling of playing the original cabinet - Spy Hunter. Then I watched a video on Dragon's Lair and was really taken by the Don Bluth animation. So much so, I felt the urge to replay it after all this time.
Run or attack? Quickly now.
I looked around for ports and found lots of versions available, but the one I finally went with was on Xbox Live Arcade. It's labeled a Kinect game, and I almost walked away from it, but on second glance I found that you can also play it with a controller. That's all I needed to know and got it. $10 seemed a little steep but it turns out it's pretty excellent.
I didn't think it would occupy me for long with gameplay that is solely quick time events. Yes, your character walks into a situation, drawn in the gorgeous cartoon style of Don Bluth, and you just decide at a key time whether to move up, down, left or right, or use your sword. If you get it right, you move on to new segments of the story. Do this long enough and you eventually catch up with the Princess Daphne and fight the dragon. The end.
Don't worry Daphne. I'll get the Dragon's key. I got this. Left! No! Right! AHH!
The game isn't long. I didn't keep track but I'm sure it's under and hour to beat. However, you can play on Easy or Hard and go for points. The points tally until you've used all of your five lives, then it resets. Dragon's Lair is basically about memory because lots of times you have to decide a move almost before the event happens on the screen - timing is critical.
The last move in this has to be done almost before you see it.
Another way to play it is with visual and aural prompts that tell you what to do in a screen. This was the default setting, and I played through it once that way, but on second play-through, I reset the screen with the orginal bezel design around the edges and the original graphics and colors of the arcade cabinet monitor. I also took away all visual and audio prompts (I think that was the way the original cabinet version worked, but I don't exactly remember). This makes you depend solely on what happens in the animations, which I think is a much more satisfying, and a more challenging way to play. Finally I set it to "arcade" mode which randomizes the next scene you play when you die like the original cabinet did (In "Home" mode, the mode set for home DVD versions of the game, you replay the same screen until you solve it).
Playing it that way got me thinking about QTE's in games and how annoying they are. I think the problem is those prompts which appear to tell you what buttons to press. It takes you out of the game and you begin looking at spots on the screen where you think the prompt will appear so you can execute it as fast as possible. The problem with that is you stop watching the animations and you feel like you haven't even seen that awesome thing you just did when it's over. If they just let you figure it out from the events unfolding themselves or gave you a subtle hint within the action, like the way Dragon's Lair does sometimes with a flash of light, it would be much, much better.
I beat it on easy, and I beat it without without any prompts in as close to the original experience as possible (boy the final battle took me a while without helpful prompts, but the amazing animation never got boring even after dozens of retries - Daphne. . . sigh). I then went for achievements and there were some good ones. One was grabbing the "Drink Me" potion in one screen with your last life and watching the death animation; another was taking advantage of a shortcut in a screen with a bunch of Goblins; another was dying of aspixilation [COR asphyxiation] in the bedroom screen (you have to do that on Hard because there's extra animations). I got all of these and it was fun trying to figure them out.
Hum, tastes like a Shamrock Shake. Not half bad. ERK!!!
I was working on hard difficulty when I finally got tired of the gameplay, especially the scene with the rotating sticks which is so hard to figure out the perfect timing without prompts. My high score was 94,526.
"Aspixialation"? Sounds intense. Like death specific to Pixlbits.
I know what you mean about QTEs, it starts feeling like you're not even responsible for what's happening. There are a couple times in Arkham Origins where I had the opposite problem too. Like, why are you asking me to press Y in the middle of this cutscene? Just make it a fight in mid-air, that could actually fun instead of catching me off guard just so I can press one button.
Now I know why writers have editors. You always miss something - "asphyxiation" I meant.
I got so annoyed with God of War Ascension - so many QTE's! Did I actually do any fighting in that game? I can't remember. I only see "X" "Y" "O" in my head.
True, althought sometimes people who edit my stuff put weird grammar mistakes in my writing that weren't there initially, due to the high volume of stories they look at.
Y'know, I've never actually played God of War.
Aspixialation is pretty funny. I imagine the explosions that happen in Darius Gaiden actually being "snow crash" and turning you into a zombie.
GOW 1 and 2 are amazing. The fighting is perfect - qte's minimal - just the way I like it.
I've never actually totally played this game. Can u get it on iOS now? I wonder.
Woohoo Pitfall 2! I was obsessed with that game.
Dragon's Lair is available on every system ever created. Some of them are not arcade ports though, but different versions I found out. Like the one on Xbox/PS2/Gamecube is a third-person adventure game where you can move around the environments. Weird, and kinda interesting.
It's also avaiable on Steam thanks to Greenlight.
This game was more fun to watch than to play, thanks to Don Bluth's animation. He also did Space Ace. Dragon's Lair was a big deal in the arcades, though, as there wasn't anything like it at the time. I never liked the laserdisc games, though. Except Time Gal was amusing for some reason.
I played the heck out of the arcade game back in the day. My friend Phil and I challenged each other to see who would beat it first. I forget who won.
I was surprised to actually enjoy replaying it. It does get annoying after a while though. There are some challenges that are just infuriating because you can never quite be sure of the exact timing needed. Most of it though, once you figure it out, is just about memorizing what you did and repeating it. I'm not about to go get the achievement for beating the game without a continue though. That's pretty tough.
Ah, Dragon's Lair. We got this when we got a new computer with a CD-ROM drive. And a color monitor! Of course, this was, like, ten years after the arcade game came out but we didn't know and were still blown away. Having to retry so much could be frustrating but like you said, the animation never got old. Space Ace was fun too but Dragon's Lair definitely had more charm. Gotta love all those crazy deaths!
I'm really tempted to play Dragon's Lair II and Space Ace now. I played Space Ace back in the day but not DLII.
I'd like to try all the weird takes on DL out there as well. The ones for NES and SNES are side scrolling action adventure games and the one on Xbox is a 3D third-person adventure with some new scenes by Don Bluth.
Surprisingly, the one on Game Boy Color is a direct port of the arcade game, just scaled back cleverly for the limited GBC hardware!
Just looked that up on youtube. It's crazy! It's just like the original but...pixilated. I'm very impressed.
Yea that's pretty cool. I saw a screen shot of it on the 3DS using both screens too. That's kinda neat.
As someone who likes what i've seen of Don Bluth (Secret of NIHM and The Land Before Time in my childhood), I want to play this game. Thankfully there's a Steam version, though i'd rather get it on sale.
Yea, there's not a whole lot of gameplay there. Playing to get the maximum score in the game, something around 400,000, would take a while though.
I plan to get this game on the Wii with the Dragon's Lair Collection or trilogy or whatever it's called. It has both Dragon's Lair games and Space Ace. Either can be played at any difficulty or watched as a whole movie. I remember this at the arcades too but couldn't play them at the time given how the machies were out of order.
Yea, I want that Wii collection too.
Well you can't have it. it's mine! Keep away! go play D&D instead. it's the 40th anniversary you know.
Oh yea, 1974 for the first version of DnD. I just noticed that ADnD came out in '77. That was the version I grew up on.
I remember this game in the arcade. It had the big cabinet and for some reason it was $1 which was out of the question for a kid who maybe had two bucks burning a hole in his pocket. I've been running into copies of this game on the 3DS but haven't decided if I want to give it another go, but if the gameplay is only around an hour, I think I could wait a bit.
I forget how much it cost when I played it, but it being 50 cents or more could've added some incentive to memorize all the moves. I know I tried to memorize the whole game.
They should bundle all the Dragon's Lair games into one. I just saw there was a DL 3 listed for PC in '91.
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