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8 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Groundbreaking Cinematic Videogame, 15 January 2001
Author: (davemmr@aol.com) from Bellerose, NY

I can see how the "hardcore modern gamers" would hate this game. What they fail to realize is that this was more than a game, it was innovation in the field of animation. Sure you couldn't directly control Dirk the Daring's moves, but you're decisions instead at key moments were the difference between Dirk being one step closer to Daphne (the Princess) and the decaying skeletal remains of failure.

Don Bluth was certainly a genius for coming up with something so simple and addicting, even though Laserdisc games in general never went to far in the industry. Dragon's Lair's animation was top notch and kept quarters rolling in simply to view the beautiful animation on screens once reserved for simple computer pixels. It's no wonder this game is one of only three arcade games in the Smithsonian (Pong and Pac-Man are the other two).

Thankfully, after 17 years, we finally have a 'perfect' home version thanks to DVD technology and Digital Leisure. You can buy it for a standard DVD player (along with getting interviews with Bluth and a 'watch' mode so you can enjoy the animation without entering moves) or the DVD-ROM version (which is more faithful to the arcade by not replaying the 'resurrection' scene before each new scene and randomising the scenes but lacks the extras of the regular DVD).

Don't let the simplistic gameplay stop you from enjoying what is a piece of history in animation.

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Incredible animation, amazing game for it's time., 13 December 2000
10/10
Author: chip from New York, NY

Dragon's Lair is, IMO, Don Bluth's greatest work. The forefather of all interactive cinematic games, Dragon's Lair was, in it's day, astounding. The animation is beautiful, and for the first time, the player was able to "control" a cartoon. Most people either love or hate the gameplay. Rote memorisation was the key to finishing this game and in effect, seeing the entire movie. Even I'll admit that the gameplay isn't all that exciting on it's own. But, it's the animation that made you want to keep playing, and made the game extremely addicting. The "save the princess from the Dragon" plot is pretty cliche, but as a game, it doesn't try to fill in the missing details. Everything else is left to the players' imaginations, and that is the key to the fascination many fans continue to have with Dragon's Lair. If you really want to experience the game, track down an original arcade machine or use an emulator. The home versions don't give it justice.

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Fond memories from childhood, 11 August 2005
Author: Horngar (Horngar@yahoo.com) from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Others before me have done a good job detailing the basics of the game so I will focus on my personal experience playing the game. I will always look back on Dragon's Lair with great nostalgia. I was 13 years old and at Myrtle Beach SC on summer vacation when I saw a news report on the then groundbreaking new game that allowed you to guide the outcome of a cartoon. I remember my brother and I watching the report breathlessly as it showed screen shots of people playing. Remember that in 1983 video gaming was in it's infancy compared to where it is now and what we we watching, at the time, was amazing. I lived in a small southern town at the time and had to convince my parents to take us to the "big city" of Greensboro NC (45 min away) where I knew an arcade there would be sure to have it. It cost then the unheard of .50 to play and there was a line of people waiting. I only played 3 or 4 times and each time did not last too long as to master the game was really a matter of knowing the correct combination of joystick/button pressing at the correct time to move to the next scene. By the end of the summer my local arcade had the game and I will always remember the day I finally slew the dragon (I hate to think how many weeks allowance I had fed into that machine). Everyone in the arcade gathered around once I had reached the Dragon's Lair and when Dirk threw the sword into the dragons chest everyone cheered! My parents had shown to pick my brother and I up and they were there to witness it as well. They had never had any use for video games (seeing them as a waste of money) but even today they admit they were caught up in moment of that day and shared in my elation at slaying the dragon. With that being said, I don't think todays generation of gamers would have the same experience or enjoyment as I had. Considering the great advances in video gaming I would only recommend this game to those who would like to look back to the forefathers of todays gaming. It will always be a great memory from my childhood and to Don Bluth I extend a hearty "Well Done" and "Thank You"

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0 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Technically impressive... and bordering on unplayable, 4 August 2007
3/10
Author: A Person

Disclaimers; I didn't play Dragon's Lair when it first came out (although I'm theoretically old enough to). Secondly, I'm judging this from the Interactive DVD version.

Yes, by the standards of the time, Dragon's Lair is pretty. I even remember seeing an Amiga conversion of Space Ace in the late 1980s and being incredibly impressed. But is Dragon's Lair a good game or not? By today's standards, absolutely not. So we should make allowances for when it came out right? Er, no. There are games like "Asteroids" that stand up incredibly well today because they're so playable. And then there are games like Dragon's Lair.

Although I never played it at the time, I imagine I'd have been as impressed as anyone else- if not more- by its beautiful graphics. But let's be honest; that's about all it has. Dragon's Lair's appeal was always style over substance. (It's no surprise that the Amiga conversion that so impressed me was lambasted for its lack of playability.)

Yes, the animation is quite nice (although I wouldn't describe it as outstanding). However, if Laserdisc/FMV games were so great, ask yourself why they never took off and dominated the market in the way that Bluth predicted they would? The answer is they generally have horrible playability, reliant on figuring out the correct (fixed) set of actions at the correct time, and generally being quite frustrating to play. Well, this sums up Dragon's Lair perfectly.

It's often not clear what to do, and getting past the scenes is more a question of figuring out (or guessing) what to do and memorising it. This is horribly frustrating.

There's no plot as such in Dragon's Lair, just a bunch of hazardous scenes in which our hero dies, dies and dies again. The animation clips are generally short and abrupt, almost too short to be even watchable. At least it doesn't have the incredibly bad acting of live action FMV games...

I salute Dragon's Lair for doing something technically innovative at the time, and as I said I can understand why people liked it back then. However as a game, it's bordering on unplayable, and I suspect that this was always the case. It's an insult to the truly classic video games to excuse Dragons Lair's shortcomings as a product of their time. They're not; they're a product of style over substance.

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0 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Now available on DVD, 7 February 2006
Author: junkmailnotus from United States

I have a three pack on DVD including Dragon's Lair, Dragon's Lair 2, and Space Ace. They play using your remote control. Same patterns and video as the originals - It was a great novelty to play through these again. Plus it was pretty hard too because I forgot all the patterns in the 20yrs since i beat the games originally. OK i need 10 lines of text apparently so. It is an interesting storyline Dirk the daring must rescue princess whatever from the evil dragon...um, in the 2nd iteration of the game Dirk the daring must rescue the princess again i think. Space ace must rescue someone from the evil Bork i think, oh well is this 10 lines?

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8 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-
Credit where credit is due, 25 January 2006
Author: Druff from earth

I see that Don Bluth is credited with directing Dragon's Lair, but the person who actually came up with the idea for the game gets no credit here. The man who was really behind Dragon's Lair was Rick Dyer. In the 70s he created a prototype for a game which used hand drawn artwork and text on an adding machine ribbon (rather than animation and sound on a laser disk.) The user would hit certain keys to make choices, and the machine would automatically roll the ribbon to the next appropriate scene. It was Dyer who pitched the idea for Dragon's Lair to several animation companies, and it happened to be Don Bluth's company who agreed to animate the game. While Don Bluth's animation in Dragon's Lair is excellent, he doesn't deserve the credit for creating the game itself.

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