Jump to content

Dragon's Lair (1983 video game)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 172.142.38.115 (talk) at 16:19, 16 April 2007 (→Trivia). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Dragon's Lair
Dragon's Lair screenshot
Developer(s)Advanced Microcomputer Systems
Publisher(s)Cinematronics
Platform(s)Arcade
Release1983
Genre(s)Action Interactive Movie
Mode(s)Up to 2 players, alternating turns

Dragon's Lair was one of the first laserdisc video games, released in June 1983 by Cinematronics. It featured polished Disney-like animation created by former Disney animator Don Bluth, and for the first time allowed players to control a fully realized character. Most other games of the era represented the character as a sprite, which consisted of a series of bitmaps animated by playing them in succession. However due to hardware limitations of the era, artists were greatly restricted in the detail they could achieve using that technique; the resolution, framerate and number of frames were severely constrained. Dragon's Lair overcame those limitations by tapping into the vast storage potential of laserdisc, which completely freed the artist, but imposed other limitations on the actual gameplay.

The game's enormous contrast with other arcade games of the time created a sensation when it appeared, and was played so heavily that many machines often broke due to the strain of overuse. It was also arguably the most successful game on this medium and is aggressively sought after by collectors.

Overview

Dragon's Lair features the hero, "Dirk the Daring", attempting to rescue "Princess Daphne" from the evil dragon Singe holed up in a wizard's castle. The screen shows animated cartoon-like scenes, and the player chooses the next scene by selecting a direction or sword-action with correct timing.

The attract mode of the game displays various short vignettes of gameplay with the accompanying narration:

"Dragon's Lair: 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. Lead on, adventurer. Your quest awaits!"

The game has often been criticized because instead of controlling the character's actions, players control his reflexes, with different full motion video (FMV) segments playing for correct or incorrect choices. However, it has still endured as a classic of gaming due to its importance in gaming history by introducing FMV into games. Despite criticisms, it is one of the most successful arcade games in history.

A quote from a Newsweek article (August 8 1983) captures the level of excitement displayed over the game during that time:

Dragon's Lair is this summer's hottest new toy: the first arcade game in the United States with a movie-quality image to go along with the action... The game has been devouring kids' coins at top speed since it appeared early in July. Said Robert Romano, 10, who waited all day in the crush at Castle Park without getting to play, "It's the most awesome game I've ever seen in my life."

Development

Dragon's Lair began as a concept by Rick Dyer, president of Advanced Microcomputer Systems. A team of game designers created the characters and locations, then choreographed Dirk's movements as he encountered the monsters and obstacles in the castle. The art department at AMS created storyboards for each episode as a guide for the final animation.

The game was animated by veteran Disney animator Don Bluth and his studio. Development was done on a shoestring budget, cost US$1 million and took seven months to complete. Since the studio couldn't afford to hire any models, the animators used photos from Playboy magazines for inspiration for the character Princess Daphne. The animators also used their own voices for all the characters instead of hiring actors in order to keep costs down, although it does feature one professional voice actor: Michael Rye as the narrator in the attract sequence (he is also the narrator for Space Ace and Dragon's Lair II).

File:Dragonslair-princessdaphne.jpg
Because of the involvement of veteran Disney animator Don Bluth, the artwork in Dragon's Lair, such as this frame of Princess Daphne, was the highest quality ever seen in an arcade game when it was released.

The music and many sound effects were scored and performed by Chris Stone at EFX Systems in Burbank. Bryan Rusenko and Glen Berkovitz were the recording engineers. The 43 second "Attract Loop" was recorded in a straight 18 hour session. Featured instruments, all keyboards, were the E-mu Emulator and Memory MOOG.

Technical

The original laserdisc players shipped with the game (Pioneer LD-V1000 or PR-7820) often broke. Though the Pioneer players were fine in quality, laserdisc players just weren't built to undergo the strain Dragon's Lair imposed. Laserdisc players were designed primarily for playing movies, which resulted in a gradual movement of the laser assembly across the disc as the data was read linearly. However Dragon's Lair would seek to different locations on the disc every few seconds to access specific animation sequences as dictated by gameplay. The massive amount of seeking, coupled with the raw amount of hours the hardware was required to operate, could result in failure of the laserdisc player in a relatively short amount of time. The fact that the game was immensely popular and almost continuously played didn't help matters. As a result, the player often had to be repaired or replaced.

It is rare to find a Dragon's Lair game intact with the original player. A kit is available (Hi-Tech Card) that allows replacement of the rather fragile Pioneer player with a modern Sony LDP series laserdisc player.

Legacy

The game led to the creation of a short-lived television cartoon series (in which the originally nameless Dragon was given the name Singe, and that Princess Daphne now wore a long pink dress). Thirteen half-hour episodes were produced. The show was generally run of the mill, but boasted an unusual feature: to keep the show in the spirit of the game, before each commercial break a narrator would ask what the viewer would do to solve the problem facing Dirk. After the commercial break, the outcomes of the various choices were shown before Dirk acts on the correct idea to save the day.

Dragon's Lair led to the creation of numerous video games for home systems. Since some original sequences did not fit in the ports for those systems, they were re-released only in a virtual sequel called Escape from Singe's Castle; A non-linear arcade interpretation of Dragon's Lair and Escape from Singe's castle with elements of platform and puzzle, was made by Software Projects for 8-bit machines in 1986.

A platformer adaptation of the game was also made for the Nintendo Entertainment System and Super NES. Dragon's Lair.

The Gameboy version (entitled Dragon's Lair: The Legend) in particular has almost nothing to do with the source game aside from Dirk as the protagonist, Mordroc as the villain, and saving Princess Daphne as the objective. In fact, the game is a port of a five-year-old ZX Spectrum game, Roller Coaster, the result being a platform game where Dirk has to negotiate a series of thinly-disguised fairground rides. The later Gameboy Color version, however, is a relatively faithful rendition of the original game.

The original game was ported to several home computer systems in the late 1980s. Due to the limitations of computers at the time, the graphics were much less impressive, and the game's limited interactivity became more apparent. These versions received almost uniformly negative reviews.

The game inspired a sequel (disregarding the Escape from Singe's Castle as one), Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp, released in 1991. It also led to the creation of 1984's Space Ace, another game animated by Don Bluth and his crew. Light versions of these games were ported for Amiga and Atari ST by Readysoft.

Dragon's Lair III: Curse of Mordread was made for Amiga and DOS in 1992, mixing original footage with scenes from Time Warp that were not included in the original PC release due to memory constraints.

ReadySoft released Dragon’s Lair for the Apple Macintosh on CD-ROM in 1994.

The Dragon's Lair Deluxe Pack was released for home computers containing all the FMV for all three games. Though it contains all the video including some scenes cut from the North American version of the game, the gameplay was reported as lackluster.

In late 2002, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the original arcade release of the smash hit, Digital Leisure Inc. worked closely with an independent game developer, Derek Sweet, to produce a special edition DVD box set of the three arcade classics that defined laser disc arcade games: Dragon’s Lair, Space Ace and Dragon’s Lair II: Time Warp. All the scenes from the original arcade releases were included and optionally the player could select new scenes that were animated in 1983, but not included in any previous Dragon’s Lair release. The games were also updated to include higher quality video, authentic scene order and a new difficulty selection to make it more challenging for Dragon’s Lair pros. A CD-ROM 4-Disc Box Set was also produced for Windows based PCs.

Dragon's Lair 3D: Return to the Lair was developed in 2002, as a 3D interpretation of the game for Microsoft Windows, Xbox, GameCube and the PS2.

A comic book mini series based on the game, but incorporating elements from the cartoon series as well, like Dirk's horse Bertram, was released in 2003 by Crossgen Publishing, concurrent with a mini series based on Space Ace. Arcana Studio is currently publishing the entire comic book series in 2006 as there were three issues that were never before published.

In 2005, Digital Leisure created a new Dragon's Lair III which utilized 3D footage from Dragon's Lair 3D, but controlled via a system like the original arcade games.

DAPHNE, an emulator for laserdisc based games, can emulate the original 1983 version. DAPHNE requires the ROM files plus the original laserdisc to run. Alternatively, an MPEG-2 video stream and Ogg Vorbis audio stream can be substituted for the laserdisc. These streams can be generated from the original laserdisc or from Digital Leisure's 2002 DVD.

In Late 2006, Digital Leisure released "Dragon's Lair HD", which features an all-new High-Definition film transfer (hence the HD), and remastered Dolby Digital 5.1 sound (on PCs that can support it).

According to Don Bluth and Gary Goldman a "Dragon's Lair" movie has been scripted and is ready to go into production once financing for the project in in place. The film will be in the classic, traditional 2D animation style.

On April 9th, a Blu-Ray version of Dragon's Lair was released. This uses the same HD transfer as the aforementioned PC release, but went through a 6 month process to clean and remaster the image. Dragon's Lair Blu-Ray is the first title to fully utilize BD-J technology.[1]

Trivia

  • Dirk only speaks twice. Once, he mutters "Uh, oh" when the platform begins to recede during the fire-swinging sequence, and exclaims "Wow!" when first entering the Dragon's Lair and laying eyes on the slumbering Princess Daphne.
  • The European arcade version of Dragon's Lair was licensed to Atari Ireland (as was Space Ace later). The cabinet design was therefore different from the Cinematronics version. The main differences were that the LED digital scoring panel was replaced with an on screen scoring screen displayed after each level, the Atari branding was present in various places on the machine (marquee, coin slots, control panel and speaker grill area), and the machines featured the cone LED player start button used extensively on Atari machines. Although licensing for this region was exclusive to Atari, a number of Cinematronics machines were also available from suppliers mostly via grey imports.
  • The sequence with the drawbridge and eyestalks seen in the attract mode was excised from the game, but still remains on the laserdisc, playable in fan-made modifications of the program, or in the version of the game released in European territories.

Pop culture

  • A version of Dragon's Lair is featured prominently in the 2005 film The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
  • The Adult Swim comedy Robot Chicken shows Dirk battling a mid-life crisis in the segment Dragon's Lair: The Middle Ages.
  • In the episode "My Peeps" from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Billy plays "Grim Manor" where a dragon scurries a princess away.
  • The TV comedy Silver Spoons featured a Dragon's Lair arcade machine in the family room set.
  • In 1988 the Italo Disco band Koto published a song "Dragon's Legend" with the text of the attraction mode narration and the sounds from the game.
  • A joke is made involving Dragon's Lair and Space Ace in episode XXI of Samurai Jack; an old man tells Jack to take the left route to get to the Dragon's Lair. When Jack asks whats it at the right path, he replies, "Space Ace," confusing Jack.
  • Dragon's Lair is parodied in the popular TV Show Family Guy.
  • Dragon's Lair was once a featured game on the 1980's video game based game show, Starcade. The entire episode can be seen in Digital Leisure's 20th Anniversary DVD and PC CD ROM editions.

Screenshots

See also

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dragon%27s_Lair_(1983_video_game)&oldid=123280176"