Dragon's Lair Remastered in HD 263
JamesO writes "Digital Leisure has announced the development of Dragon's Lair HD, for release this autumn for the PC. Remastered is usually a term associated with DVD movie release, usually referring to the cleaning up of the film's print. It's not that odd then that the term is being used for what is essentially an interactive cartoon. Dragon's Lair HD promises to do what it says on the tin, offering the original game in true high definition.
" I still remember the first time I saw Dragon's Lair in an arcade. I'd love to play it again in HD — in the arcade it was a quarter eater.
I remember... (Score:2, Funny)
50 cents? (Score:2)
Re:50 cents? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:50 cents? (Score:2)
The economics that went through our heads was this: want do we want - 50p for 30 minutes (reasonably skilled arcade players) or 50p for 20 seconds of animation?
Re:50 cents? (Score:2)
Of course, the real reason to hate the game was that the gameplay sucked, no matter what the price.
Easter Egg - Unlimited Lives (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Easter Egg - Unlimited Lives (Score:5, Funny)
Next on the list... (Score:5, Funny)
While you are waiting for HD Pong. (Score:2)
http://www.plasmapong.com/ [plasmapong.com]
Should look nice in HD.
I'd love to play it again in HD (Score:5, Funny)
And throw in a few barely audible mumbles of "you suck" when they screw up.
Best/cheapest way to enjoy the game.
Overrated... (Score:5, Insightful)
Dragon's Lair was a very early example of the game that looks so much better than it plays.
Re:Overrated... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm really sorry to hear that...Unless your last name happens to be Diggler.
Re:Overrated... (Score:3, Insightful)
I remember playing Dragon's Lair in the arcade once. It sucked, even when not compared to the other games available.
What makes them think people are going to pay for a game of comparable quality (in gameplay terms at least) to some of the worse after-thought games that get stuck on kids' DVDs as extras? I understand the power of nostalgia, but I'm slap bang in the target demographic age-wise and an avid gamer, and I'm not touching it with a barge pole.
Re:Overrated... (Score:4, Insightful)
What makes them think so? The fact that for over a year - Dragon's Lair machines were printing presses, and they were printing money. You, and the other folks on this thread, who didn't play it represent a distinct minority.
Re:Overrated... (Score:2)
The first time I saw the game won during actual gameplay was when I saw the Dragon's Lair special of the old Starcade [starcade.tv] game show. (The Starcade website is going through upgrades or something at the moment of this post)
Re:Overrated... (Score:4, Insightful)
I felt the same way about the game back in the day.
It was all eye candy, but you had very limited mobility/interaction with your character. You didn't have free movement or anything like that, you had to interact with the game in time with it's branching on the laser-disc. If you chose the wrong direction, you died. Too late, you died. Too soon, you died.
As I recall, there was exactly one path through the game, and you basically had to be playing according to a set script which seemed to have no flexibility. At least, that was the impression I had of it before I went back to Donkey Kong.
Distinctly underwhelming with crappy game play as I recall it.
Re:Overrated... (Score:2)
It was very stupid.
Re:Overrated... (Score:3, Interesting)
Absolutely. Anyone who didn't get this would likely be frustrated by the game. That's not to say that the flashes were always helpful
because most of the time you would rely on memorization rather than waiting for the flashes. Initially I spent far more time watching others
play than I did playing, which is great for learning the moves. It could be damn frustrating wh
Re:Overrated... (Score:4, Funny)
back in the day (Score:4, Interesting)
And You were Right (Score:3, Insightful)
The real Classics (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll stick with the real classics...
Re:The real Classics (Score:4, Interesting)
Space Invaders, Galaxians, AstroBlaster, Defender, PacMan, Space Panic, Mr Do, Phoenix, Moon Cresta . . .
All from about 78-81.
Try telling that to the kids of today!
Re:The real Classics (Score:5, Funny)
I hear ya! Here's a story along those lines. A few years back, I was sitting out on my front porch playing The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening on my original Game Boy (yes, it still works, God bless it). Some local kids were roving around in the street on their bikes. One of them saw me sitting there playing what appeared to be a handheld game of some sort, so they approached and asked what I was playing. I told them. They'd never heard of it. They also wanted to know what the strange, bulky handheld system I was using was, and where I got it. I told them. They laughed, and called me a liar right to my face. "That's not a Gameboy!", Kid One said. "This is!" Kid One pulled out a Gameboy Advance (I noted with amusement that a Pokemon cartridge was stuck in it).
I went on to explain that the Gameboy originated in 1989. They didn't believe me. I said, "Wait here." Went inside, got my Gameboy case and all my games (not very many: Zelda, Tetris, Yoshi, Megaman...just the essentials to keep me amused during roadtrips as a child). They were in shock.
Imagine the looks on their faces when I went on to show them a few of my Tiger handhelds.
Re:The real Classics (Score:2, Funny)
Oblig Back to the Future quote (Score:2)
Re:Oblig Back to the Future quote (Score:2)
Re:The real Classics (Score:2)
Re:The real Classics (Score:2)
Tempest 2000 on that is fucking amazingly fun to play. Play it with the jag hooked up to an amp capable of Pro-Logic II (heh, it's the best you're gonna get from a 2-channel source) and enjoy. For added entertainment, imbibe your intoxicant of choice before playing.
Woohoo!
Jaguar + Tempest 2000 + VLM (Score:2)
Big deal! I'm one of the three people in the world who bought a Jaguar CD! Just for Jeff Minter's VLM!
Re:The real Classics (Score:3, Informative)
Odds are, your generation would consider classic CARS to have been made before you were born. Classic video games made before you were born still deserve the true classic status.
Re:The real Classics (Score:2)
Re:The real Classics (Score:2)
Uh, I would consider Frogger [klov.com] a classic. It's at least as old as Donkey Kong.
Re:The real Classics (Score:2)
Heh, original Gauntlet. Man, that game just never ceased to piss me off....
Re:The real Classics (Score:2)
Ditto here. Back in '86, I would routinely spend $10 or $20 at a time wasting away hours playing Gauntlet. It was, for its time, videogame crack. A year or two ago, I played it on MAME and enabled the cheats so that I could ba
Re:The real Classics (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The real Classics (Score:3, Interesting)
Definitely not, since you weirdly included PaperBoy, and neglected Lode Runner.
BTW, not all classic games exist on Nintendo's platform. Many, but hardly all.
Re:The real Classics (Score:2)
Re:The real Classics (Score:2)
Re:The real Classics (Score:2)
Re:The real Classics (Score:2, Interesting)
What are you talking about? Are you like in your 20's? The real classics are Asteroids, Space Invaders, Temptest, Pacman, and Donkey Kong. You got to love the kids who think Mario first appeared in Super Mario Bros. Dragons Lair didn't have the best game play however it did have the ability to burn an impression in your mind as you stared in awe. "Oooohhh, it looks like an
Re:The real Classics (Score:2)
Re:The real Classics (Score:2)
My grandparents own a handheld Donkey Kong game from who knows what year (even I can't remember). It's a big, bulky thing, it looks like a big wedge of cheese (30 degree angle) on its side, with a joystick and a button. Man, I loved that thing.
Re:The real Classics (Score:2)
So you stood there at the games until the clothes dried themselves. You would have gotton an hour's use from the dryer on four quarters which was more than most people got playing four quarters on a video game. I agree, though. It was much easier to carry a dried, washtub shaped, lump of clothes home from the laundromat.
Re:The real Classics (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The real Classics (Score:2, Funny)
Mod parent up (Score:2)
Thanks for the laugh! Really interesting game, and how it led to the Unix being created first on the PDP-7.
http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/spacetravel.h
Frozen bubble (Score:2)
Re:The real Classics (Score:2)
Re:The real Classics (Score:2)
Re:The real Classics (Score:2)
Frozen Bubble? This is what passes for a classic??
Clones can't be classics. The original was a classic, albeit from the later age of classics. Porting it to Linux does not mean you have created a new classic -- it just means there's a shortage of games on Linux.
Re:The real Classics (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, do you think that there were no "classic" games before the Nintendo came out? Are you like 18 or something? Criminy.
Re:The real Classics (Score:2)
Re:The real Classics (Score:2)
Of course Ratchet and Clank isn't bloody either, but god knows they're more entertaining than that f**king threadbare Mario franchise, which Nintendo hasn't quite finished flogging into disassociated particles quite yet. I plan on getting and enjoying a Wii
Suprisingly good game (Score:2, Interesting)
But for me, a very casual gamer, it was fun. It was the games that required elaborate A-button/B-button/joystick sequences that I couldn't stand. Not sure HD will improve things that much, though.
Re:Suprisingly good game (Score:2)
It was, and for that exact reason, I put exactly 4 quarters into it before I walked away and said the hell with it.
At the time, I was a bit of an arcade junkie. And I thought Dragon's Lair sucked
originally designed as animation (Score:4, Informative)
don't ask me where I got this wisdom, I read it somewhere when the game was just eleased originally.
Re:originally designed as animation (Score:2)
Re:originally designed as animation (Score:2)
I was reading this comment wondering what the hell was going on, until I realized you said Bluth, not Knuth.
Multi-player (Score:3, Interesting)
Okay...now I feel old again.
Screenshots and trailer (Score:5, Informative)
How to play DL (Score:5, Funny)
The book (Score:2)
6 used and new available from $7.00 [amazon.com]
a spoiler alert! {:-P) (Score:2)
in it's era... (Score:3, Interesting)
Although there was a Laserdisc centric game which I cannot remember the name of which used footage from Lupin III (anime) for it's content. That was the most interesting because to this day I can still hum the music from it.
Re:in it's era... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:in it's era... (Score:2, Interesting)
It's already an emulation project (Score:2)
And quite playable. See Daphne. [daphne-emu.com]
You'll need to locate the graphic files yourself, of course. But anyone who has done the Mame thing should know how to do that.
Anyone remember the 'Wizard' game with a keyboard? (Score:3, Interesting)
It was even more of a gnarly quarter muncher because you had to move from a joystick and an action button to a full 101 key keypad and an unfamiliar user interface. Anyone remember the name of this game?
Anyhow, SPACE ACE ROCKS, DOWN WITH DRAGONS LAIR!!
I always felt like players should charge their audience an admission fee.
Re:Anyone remember the 'Wizard' game with a keyboa (Score:2, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thayer's_Quest [wikipedia.org]
Re:Anyone remember the 'Wizard' game with a keyboa (Score:2)
Thayer's Quest
With the glorious, hard to understand, speech synthesis. The nice thing about that game (other than the first decision you need to make in the game) is that it played more like a choose your own adventure book. It wasn't all just a 50-50 chance of losing when a decision was to be made.
A HD cartoon? (Score:2)
I also remember when it came out for the PC around 1991. It took 7-9 floppies and looked nearly as good as the original. It was fun for about one night.
To Emulate or Not (Score:2)
http://www.daphne-emu.com/ [daphne-emu.com]
I am a big fan of software preservation. However, if I only emulate the original copy would that be considered warez now that a new shiny version is back on retail shelves?
Honestly, I wonder if this might spin off a retro-trend in similiar twitch-movie gaming. I don't see why people couldn't make similiar games with DVD systems today. You just branch to various chapters on a disc and hit
Re:To Emulate or Not (Score:2)
Already done. Dragon's Lair, Dragon's Lair 2: Time Warp, Dragon's Lair 3, and Space Ace, all available on interactive DVDs, though only one of them is available as new from amazon.com. There are others as well.
nah (Score:2)
Re:nah (Score:2)
Redo it as a "real" game (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Redo it as a "real" game (Score:2)
One thing I don't like about DL (Score:2)
Have one of the original players... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sony was not original (Score:2)
For those of you who can't wait. (Score:3, Funny)
http://www.studiohunty.com/dungeon/ [studiohunty.com]
I liked Dragons Lair when it came out but as games go now, it can be somewhat annoying to play.
Dungeon Escape! (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone beat that one yet?
Why didn't they just remaster the game (Score:2)
Actually now that I think of it, that might be a nice proof-of-concept for resolution-independent animation recording... lots of CPU though...
The first 50 cent game? (Score:2)
I hated this game. (Score:5, Funny)
most machines had that turned off.. (Score:2)
Most machines had this turned off. Perhaps your experience is why they turned it off. I figured it was to decrease game time and thus increase throughput.
Quarter eater (Score:5, Informative)
Sure was. It was the first game I ever saw that was fifty cents a pop.
And for all those who are complaining about how random the play was, this game had patterns, same as any other game. When you're trying to get past those two spinning Q-Tips, you press the stick when he lunges. In the water, you go towards the lighter stream, etc. Remember kids, this was nineteen eighty freaking three--Dragon's Lair looked WORLDS better than what else was out there. Who cares if the gameplay was less than perfect. Besides, that princess was a piece of ass. (No surprise, I guess: reading the Wikipedia article, the studio couldn't afford a model so they just looked at Playboys. Ha.)
Gameplay suffered because there was only one laser disc in the system so there was a short blank-screen delay when the scenes switched from the 'setup' to the 'result.'. I heard that Space Ace had two and it would switch back and forth between them with no delay, but reading Wikipedia I see that there were conversion kits to make DL into SA, so who knows--I might be remembering wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon's_Lair [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Ace [wikipedia.org]
There was another similar game.... (Score:2)
It was some type of spy/noir game set in the 40s or something like that. You had to drive up some curvy road hitting the joystick at just the right moments. That game was pretty cool and i seem to remember it probably because it was animated so nicely.
I'll have to hunt aroun
Re:There was another similar game.... (Score:2)
Laser Disc Games in general (Score:2, Informative)
To be honest with you, I think we can attribute Dragons Lair whole concept to today's game model - Solve a puzzle, move on to the next a
"--Or will he be caught hanging aROUND again?" (Score:2)
The story/animation in that game captured me in a big, big way. When I discovered the Miyazaki film within the same year, (or rather, some story books using stills from the film; getting an acutal copy was somewhat more challenging), I was similarly blown away. --Manga and anime were unknown words back in '83, and I was of the first wave of Westerners to fall under its spell.
Good times!
-FL
Coolest Looking game ever (Score:2)
I did very much enjoy watching people who had learned all the moves go to the end but I personally thought the gameplay was crap. I was much happier to step across the isle and play Tron. Man would I love to own that cabinet today.
The way it was meant to be seen? (Score:4, Funny)
Played off a laserdisc, output on a standard definition video monitor mounted inside of an arcade cabinet surrounded by the flashing and noises of other video games?
Watch the whole thing (Score:3, Informative)
Better laser disc games (Score:2)
There were some other laser disc games that were fun, though:
Re:Already been done for the XBOX? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:HD? I want my holograms! (Score:2)
You can buy it on eBay cheap [ebay.com], well, at least the DVD version, but it does come with 3d glasses.
Oh, there was also a second one.. (Score:2)